The library was first established in 1963 by Sayyid Abbas Al-Hussayni Al-Kashani, and it was holding about 5,000 books in its shelves, most of them were damaged or stolen during the 1991 uprisings in Iraq against Saddam Hussein's regime, and it was neglected since then up to the reopening in 2006.
Post 2006
In 2006 it was reopened after 3 years of being closed after the Iraq war in 2003, the reopening was heavily supported by Sayyid Ali al-Husseini al-Sistani. The new library included new divisions that were not existed in the old library, many specialized divisions and units were developed to cope with the requirements of the new era after the Iraq war and to handle the scientific requirements by the students of the Iraqi Universities and researchers.
Collecting the manuscripts
Nearly five thousand written copies classified as precious, rare and of heritage were collected in the Library within the period of 2009 to 2014, and this operation was done in three stages:
The first stage: to collect the manuscripts without a specific kind of scripts. The goal was to safeguard and collect what can be collected from the scattered, damaged, stolen treasures, or those smuggled out of the country because of successive wars, instability or economic and cultural reasons. The last factor explains the status of ignorance of their value, importance and scarcity leading to their damage, another example is what happened during the uprising of Sha'ban in 1411 / 1991, when the soldiers and members of the Baathists made tea in the courtyard of Al-Abbas Holy Shrine on the fire made out from burnt rare books and manuscripts, therefore this experience made the library put in the priorities of work to collect what can be collected and therefore experts were hired for this work.
The second stage: The treatment, maintenance and safeguard of the manuscript within the proper conditions. For this purpose the house of manuscripts sent to known European countries in this area its competent affiliates in order to make their training and get recognized specialization diplomas. The House also bought a private "hospital" to address and treat manuscripts according to the latest known technologies, and its affiliates are today the leading specialists in this regard in Iraq, which allow them to maintain a number of known libraries in different provinces of Iraq.
The last stage included the picturization, classification, the indexing of the manuscript and the historical, scientific and author identification to configure it, to facilitate its delivery and to make it accessible to the hands of researchers and investigators.
Divisions
In addition to the main reading hall, the library includes the listed divisions below:
