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In the previous issue of The Monthly, Kutub Ltd, the well known publishing house, announced that it was about to publish the “Journal of Excursion to Syria and Palestine 1860” written by Joseph Dalton Hooker, the English botanist known for his historical scientific voyages extending from the south pole to the Himalayas across India, Syria, Palestine, Morocco and the United States.

On a larger scale, the content of the book is unknown since it remains a manuscript that is still unrevealed. The author was a scientist who dedicated his life to accurate scientific observations, travels, and writing both scientific and above all agricultural articles. He helped his friend, the famous scientist Charles Darwin, in correcting the draft of his book “On the Origin of Species.” When he arrived to the Middle East, the region was experiencing major events on the political level. In fact, in 1860, the Levant was subject to many foreign interventions. Lebanon, in particular witnessed many religious massacres and political formulas that caused havoc to its foundations and is still affecting the country today, and for years to come.

What place will this book occupy in the readers’ minds and hearts? More importantly, we first ask ourselves, why do people read? It seems readers have two main tendencies that lead them to read:  the first is Flaubert’s concept, “read to live,” and the second is Al Jahiz’s concept, “the book is my pleasure when I am alone and my leisure in times of distress.”

Looking at the world of books, we notice four main purposes behind reading and buying books. The first is the feeling of “union” with great writers and the sense of virtual reality with great men. Something like saying we spent a day with Goethe or Tolstoy, as our poet Ahmed Chawki alluded to this relationship when he said, “I replaced my friends with books since books were the only thing loyal to me.”

The second purpose behind buying books is profiting from its practical use, such as guides and dictionaries. We use them to execute a certain job. It is an important and useful relationship, yet at times it is short and does not last more than a few minutes.

The third purpose is decoration, which has always accompanied books as an expression of their importance. Some old books are adorned in a way hard to describe. One of the main reasons for book decoration was the evolution of book production into printed papers, laminated volumes and colored designs. In other words, it was splendor added to the pleasure of seeing. This is how ornamented books became an object of pride for their owners who did not need to read them; especially knowing how rare they were.

The fourth group of readers, buys books for ambiguous reasons; as if we are talking about a silent majority that does not reveal or express its motives. In fact, this group does not read or admit that it reads. It buys books, which it is proud of and definitely realizes the importance of what it does. This category often likes to lend books just for show-off. It is a small wealthy category, of which income is similar to that of the paint collections of amateurs. Their collections are comparable to small libraries. Shakespeare equated the library with a duchy when with the mouth of one of his heroes, when he said “that is my duchy who would exchange it for a library?

Talking about books leads us turn to libraries. In the University of  Pennsylvania Museum is exhibited a tile board registered under number “166-15-29” that was found amidst the ruins of Sumer and is considered to be the first library catalogue in history. A similar board can be seen in the Louvre and is thought to have been written by the same person according to experts in Sumerian language. This was the first methodological system for cataloguing books; a contribution of the Fertile Crescent civilization. It is not by coincidence that the first contemporary bibliographer who followed the path of the Sumerian civilization. He was Ibn An-Nadim, a citizen of Baghdad. In fact, he was the first to classify sciences and human knowledge. His “Fahrast” was the first index for books known in his times that were in their original and translated versions. This classification became the basis adopted by the American library scientist Dewey (1952 A.D) in his classification system, a thousand years after Ibn An-Nadim.Moreover, the German mathematician and philosopher Leibniz, who  was one of the greatest of his times and inventor of the binary number system that is the only language understood by computers until now, dedicated much of his time to library science and laid the foundations of alphabetical indexing.

It is also worth mentioning that the big national scientific libraries were founded during the same period that witnessed the birth of modern Europe. The major progress of libraries in the developed European countries was linked with the progress of science, culture and technology, which was a prerequisite for the formation of this intellectual treasure. The evolution of science and knowledge confirmed the saying by the novelist and historian Shelby Foote that “a university is nothing but a group of buildings surrounding a library.”

There is no doubt that the “Journal of Excursion to Syria and Palestine” will catch the attention of all four categories. The book will be particularly interesting to readers due to its international importance and the significant circumstances that were taking place during the author’s observations and remarks. In addition, the book is an important piece in the context of ‘the voyages literature,’ making its publication a documenting and cultural process that provides the reader with the pleasure of going back to the astounding facts of history. This leaves the amateurs of rare books impatient, shedding light on history from new angles and perspectives, where the author describes the Levant and the Himalayas with the same degree of importance.

2009 - ISSUE 83

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