In an unassuming house on the Tunisian island of Djerba, Said Al-Barouni embarked on a mission to safeguard his Muslim community’s little-known heritage, using technology and AI to save age-old religious manuscripts. The 74-year-old librarian and member of the Islamic offshoot Ibadism took up the reins of his family’s six-generation library in the 1960s and has been in a race against time to preserve whatever Ibadi manuscripts he can find. “Look at what Djerba’s humidity has done to this one,” he said, his gloved hand bearing a tarnished piece of paper inside a climate-controlled room.
Today, the library holds over 1,600 ancient Ibadi texts and books on various topics, including astrology and medicine, dating from as early as 1357. But Barouni is still on a quest to gather more literature, which has been scattered for centuries among families after they resigned themselves to practicing their faith in secret. After disagreeing on the succession following the death of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) in 632 AD, Ibadis were considered Kharijites, an early divergent branch of Islam whose adherents were labelled heretics.
They fled to remote areas in modern-day Oman - where most Ibadis today live - as well as Libya, Tunisia and Algeria. In North Africa, they established a capital in Tihert, today’s Algerian city of Tiaret, but their newfound peace was short-lived when the Shiite Fatimid dynasty swept through the region in the 10th century and chased the Ibadis out of their mai.
