The Mahmoud Salih Collection 9

The Mahmoud Salih collection is the outcome of the meeting of the late Sudanese philanthropist, Mahmoud Salih, and the British collector of old and rare books, Paul Wilson, specializing in books on Africa and the Middle East. When their paths crossed in 1997, Wilson’s collection of books on Sudan amounted to about 850 books. Salih requested him to continue looking for books, documents, maps, and paintings to enrich this core collection and in ten years it all amounted to more than 2000 items.

In 2006, these were deposited at the University of Bergen, thanks to the longstanding friendship between Mahmoud Salih and professor emeritus, Anders Bjørkelo, specializing in the 19th century economic history of Sudan, as well as Salih’s respect for the scholarly quality and profound involvement in Sudan Studies at the University of Bergen since 1963. The letter written by Mahmoud Salih can be read here.

It was in 2006 that Mahmoud Salih first contacted the then Centre for Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies at the University of Bergen with the request to deposit the Sudan Collection here for at least five years or until the conditions in Sudan allowed the Collection’s relocation to Sudan. The consideration of the safety of the Collection has kept it in Bergen for almost twenty years now. It can still be visited at Bergen Global.

The situation in Sudan – especially as we are hopefully entering the end of the civil war that erupted in April 2023, which has destroyed the infrastructure of the Sudanese capital – has increased the responsibility of the University of Bergen, which originally consisted in the safekeeping of the physical collection and the digitization of parts of its contents.

The choice of which items should be digitized was given to librarian Tom Johnsen. He selected a couple of hundred items that were scanned and organized in the old web platform of the University of Bergen Library. Today, this platform is closed and the original selection of scanned treasures from the Mahmoud Salih Collection is being made accessible hereby. We hope to be able to digitalize and make available more material in the future.

In the meantime, we also provide access to the entire catalogue of the collection (including the catalogue over pictures) for further reference and for planning a visit to consult the Salih Collection. The unique identifier here in Marcus for each book is the individual accession number given by Paul Wilson.

For other parts of the Sudan Collection at the University of Bergen Library, see The Sudan Collection.