HH Sheikha Moza meets with President of the Spanish National Heritage

Her Highness Sheikha Moza bint Nasser, Chairperson of the Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, met yesterday President of the Spanish National Heritage Nicholas Martinez-Fresno and Director of the El Escorial Library Jose Luis in the presence of Queen Sofia, wife of the King of Spain.

During the meeting, Her Highness listened to a presentation on the history of the library and its most important content of ancient manuscripts as well as discussed ways to strengthen future co-operation between Qatar Foundation and the Library of El Escorial with regard to the Arab and Islamic historical archives. Her Highness was presented with Microfilm copies for 2000 Arabic historical manuscripts in various fields such as Qur’an science and Islamic jurisprudence and medicine as a gift from the El Escorial Library for the Heritage Library of the Qatar Foundation.

Co-operation between Qatar Foundation and the Library of El Escorial in this area is part of a huge project that aims to establish a database containing much of the historical documents related to Qatar, the region and the Islamic world from all over the world in order to make it available as a reference not only for students but also for researchers, academics and those interested in this field.

The Library of El Escorial is one of the most important libraries in Europe with its content of the manuscripts. The library has almost 45,000 printed works from the 15th and 16th centuries and some 5,000 manuscripts.