Fatima al-Bazzal is a PhD student from the Lebanese University, in Information and Communication Studies. She has been a professional librarian and researcher over the last decade, first in the Lebanese National Library Rehabilitation Project as a junior librarian, where she was introduced to the concepts and practices of librarianship and enrolled in different projects that aimed at describing the library’s collection, and managing its preservation and accessibility. She then worked for different Lebanese cultural; Shamaa Arab Educational Database, The Fire horse Archive, Knowledge Workshop-The Feminist Library, and March Lebanon-Virtual Museum of Censorship Project. Building over her librarianship background, and driven by the notions of accessibility and open access, her PhD. research project tackles an under-represented intellectual archive of Amil Mountains Region in Southern Lebanon (known as Jabal Amil). Following the circulation of a series of manuscripts in Lebanon and abroad, she is studying the various texts, agents and places contributing to the creation, management, distribution, and transmissions of this archive.

Research Project

Archiving Absence and Loss
Amili manuscripts in libraries worldwide

My project tackles an under-represented and highly dispersed literary manuscripts archive. It aims to counter the collective memory narrative that recalls Ahmad Pasha el-Jazzar, the Ottoman Governor of Acre, confiscation and burning of the rich Amili intellectual heritage. Though this incident cannot be confirmed, it refers to a rich cultural heritage that was documented within bio-bibliographical references. This project aims at virtually re-constructing this heritage by tracing it within different manuscript collections in the world. By these means, it wishes to structure a provisional identity for the Amili manuscript archive and identify what is available counterpointing the gaps and what has been lost.