The Director-General of the Islamic World Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (ICESCO), Dr. Salim AlMalik, announced the Organization’s intention to organize an international conference to launch an integrated project to revive the tangible and intangible heritage of Aleppo, with the revival of the Awqaf Library at the heart of this project, through its restoration, digitization and reactivation of its scientific role.

This was stated in a recorded speech by Dr. AlMalik streamed during a workshop titled “Reviving Aleppo Manuscripts”, organized in Istanbul on June 12 and 13, 2025, by the House of Manuscripts at the Sultan Ahmed Waqf in Istanbul with the participation of 16 government institutions, international organizations, and a host of experts and heritage enthusiasts.

In his speech, Dr. AlMalik affirmed the Organization’s commitment to reviving Aleppo’s heritage by reviving the ancient scientific heritage of Aleppo, especially through its Alwaqf Library, which contained masterpieces of science and precious manuscripts in exegesis (tafsir), hadith, jurisprudence, medicine, and astronomy, qualifying the workshop as “a whisper from the past and a message for the future”. He also stated that “reviving the manuscript is itself a revival of thought, it is giving a new life to the letter, and rewriting the biography of a nation that made knowledge a legacy, paper a platform, and pen a pathway to light.”

Dr. AlMalik reviewed the most prominent ICESCO initiatives in this field, including the establishment of the Center of Calligraphy and Manuscripts in the Islamic World, and the launch of a pioneering heritage project that has so far enabled the registration of more than 750 heritage sites in a step aimed at highlighting the cultural depth of the Islamic world and the global recognition of its richness, noting that this workshop is in line with the Organization’s efforts to “consolidate the presence of heritage in the nation’s consciousness and renew its bonds with memory.”
Dr. AlMalik concluded his speech by emphasizing that every effort made in this way is a step on the road back to the self, and every manuscript revived is a new sunshine in the sky of the Islamic world, considering this workshop “the beginning of a blessed action that will raise the status of Aleppo, revive its letters, and restore its high scientific glory.”

This hands-on workshop is part of an integrated project to resurrect the Alwaqf Library in Aleppo, which dates back to the seventh century AH, as part of a comprehensive initiative to restore and rehabilitate damaged endowment schools in Syria and use them culturally to serve the Library. The current efforts are a continuation of the project launched in 2006 to reopen the library on the occasion of the declaration of Aleppo Culture Capital in the Islamic world by ICESCO, before the closure of the Library over the last fourteen years.