Saudi researchers throw rare pictures of Jeddah and Diriyah at the King Abdulaziz Library

The King Abdulaziz Public Library hosts a specialized center that is an edifice to protect the Saudi cultural heritage, as Saudi experts are combined to restore thousands of documents, manuscripts, rare books, photos and maps, leaving life after time factors almost blur their features.
Shaza Al -Ajmi, Director of the Cultural Heritage Department and the Restoration Center, confirmed that the center that was launched in the year 2022 is working to preserve and maintain the various historical materials acquired by the library.
She pointed out that the center succeeded in sterilizing more than 61,000 rare scientific materials, and restoring 28,661 other materials, including groups of photos, documents, maps, rare books and manuscripts.

Save heritage holdings

Al -Ajami added that the center is not limited to the library’s holdings, but rather extends to the provision of restoration, treatment and conservation services to individuals and external parties, stressing that the center is characterized by providing empty and varied vessels that suit the sustainable memorization of heritage holdings of all kinds.
She pointed out that the restoration stages start from receiving the material to be restored, through treatment, sterilization, manual and automatic restoration, tolerance, sewing and binding, to its delivery in specialized conservation boxes to protect it from environmental factors.
She explained that the center includes multiple sections, including: the processing and sterilization department, the manual restoration and documentation department, the automated and liquidation department, the sewing and binding section, equipped with the latest technologies, such as a sterilization room with ozone, the cache and toxic gas suction cabin, the automatic restoration device, the lamination device, and the laser scissors.

Rare pictures of the city of Diriyah

Among the most prominent achievements of the center is the restoration of rare pictures of the ancient city of Diriyah dating back to the beginning of the fourteenth century AH, 415 rare photos of the city of Jeddah, and 183 rare books, including the book “Meshaal Al -Muzal”, which documents the path of the Egyptian pilgrim with land.
The center restored a group of ancient Saudi currencies “Hajj receipts”, more than 6,600 rare documents, 1,260 rare patrols, 12,694 character, in addition to sterilizing and restoring thousands of rare maps, including the map of the continent of Africa and the Arabian Peninsula that Abraham Ortolius drew in 1570 AD, and the Ptolemy map that covers the Arabian Peninsula in 1564 AD.

The Jiakomo Gast Map, who drew a map in the year 1554 AD, is two parts, the first part between India and Sri Lanka, while the second showed parts of the southern Arabian Peninsula and the Indian Ocean, in addition to maps dating back to the Nile River and the continent of Asia in 1799 AD and other sources of cultural heritage acquired by the library.
Al -Ajmi stated that the center receives historical materials from manuscripts, documents, movies and photographs, and provides services to be saved by microfille and coding, ensuring that the center is working to train and qualify national cadres specialized in the field of restoration, through the courses and workshops it provides.