WASHINGTON, April 26: After the recent destruction of the contents of the Iraq National Library in Baghdad, scholars in the United States are now working on a project to electronically preserve the books of another nation, Afghanistan.

Scholars at the New York University are digitizing all books printed in Afghanistan between 1871 and 1930, cataloguing them, and making them electronically available to the public. A Web site will be established with a list of rare books for the benefit of Afghan scholars throughout the world.

Announcing the project, Mr Carol A. Mandel, Dean of the Division of Libraries at the NYU, said the university has just begun to raise $1.5 million needed for digitizing the books, four out of five of which are in Persian and the remainder in Pashto, another major Afghan language.

In addition to books, historic photographs, scholarly journals and geographic surveys, newspapers, government documents and manuscripts will ultimately be included in the project.

Printing was generally unknown in Afghanistan prior to 1871 because the only press in existence was controlled by the government and rarely used. According to Islamic tastes of the time, manuscripts were held in much higher esteem than printed documents.

The 1930 cap date for the project was selected because books printed later than that were widely available and can be found in a number of libraries abroad as well as in Afghan’s private collections, Mr Mandel said.

The editor of the digital project is Mr Robert D. McChesney, a professor of Middle Eastern Studies at the NYU.

He said material in the first phase of the project for the years 1871 to 1900 includes the poems of 17th century Afghan poet, Ayishah-i-Durrani, many law books and regulations on prophets and prophecy, tax laws, marriage laws, accounting, and a rare volume on how to wage jihad.