An Iraqi Jesuit estimates that he saved 1,000 ancient manuscripts, including biblical and liturgical books, from the advance of the Islamic State.The brief article does not specify the language(s) of the saved manuscript, but since Father Tooma is reportedly now running an orphanage and a school in the Aramaic-speaking town of Alqosh in Iraq, it seems likely that Syriac manuscripts were involved.
“If Daesh burns down a church we can rebuild it, but the manuscripts are our history,” Father Gabriel Tooma told an international news channel. “If they get destroyed, then we are lost, and our culture will be forgotten.”
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For a similar recent story about a priest saving manuscripts from the depredations of ISIS in Iraq, see here and here.
