A tour of the
Middle East's
best bookshops

“Books are the gift you can open over and over,” a blackboard outside Halabi Bookshop reads.

The family-run shop sits on the corner of a main street in Beirut’s Tariq El Jdideh neighbourhood, its large windows framed by red panels that offer a glimpse of the thousands of stories waiting to be told within.

Shelves of books and magazines rise to the ceiling in the tightly packed room – the upper levels can only be reached by a ladder, as the music of famed Lebanese singer Fairouz drifts from the speakers.

One sunny Friday morning, newspapers hanging on a piece of string outside sway gently in the wind.

“It’s my happy place,” says Lana Halabi, who owns the bookshop, which houses around 15,000 titles, with her brother Kareem Halabi.

Lana’s grandfather began renting the building in 1958 and opened a supermarket, where he sold books, magazines and other products.

Less than 20 years later, the shop bore witness to Lebanon’s brutal 1975-90 civil war and was repeatedly closed during periods of violence only to reopen again later.

During that time, like many Lebanese people, Lana’s father Abdallah, who had then taken over the shop, travelled abroad to work.

“He was inspired by his employer back then - he had books and loved books. So when he came back, they started collecting more books and magazines and newspapers in the '90s,” says Lana.

But business hit a rocky patch and her father “wasn't able to manage properly the consignments and the books”.

By the 2000s, the shop had become overwhelmed with books, “hoarding” them rather than selling them.

“It was totally full,” says Lana.

“There was just a little alleyway for people to come in. By 2015, it was just totally inaccessible.

“[My father] used to come and open every day. He would sell daily magazines and weekly newspapers but no people were able to come inside.”

At the time, Lana was working at a major fashion retailer but had been looking for a change of pace. She had started collecting books herself, storing them at her home, and set up a Facebook page. 

“I started encouraging people to read. It wasn’t just to sell books, but it was like sharing a love of reading," she adds.

Weekends became dominated by attending book markets.

“In 2015, I thought I wanted to quit my job and jump and take the leap and do the project,” she says.

She left her job and, with contributions from the entire family, they renovated the bookshop.

“It took us two months to sort all the books that were here. There were around 12,000 books.”

She regards 2017 as the first properly operational year. It was a difficult time in Lebanon’s publishing world, with one of the country’s largest newspapers, As-Safir, having closed the year before.

“For us opening a bookshop at a time when a prominent newspaper that had been there for years and years decided to close … it was like something against the trend," she says. "And so it was a hard time for us.”

Under Lana’s management, the bookshop has grown its online presence all while retaining its historical charm. Old cartoons and newspaper clippings adorn the walls from a time when the internet did not exist. Now Halabi Bookshop is online and active on social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and Twitter.

“We used social media to reach more people and to increase our community,” she says.

“Because it wasn't hard to market, it wasn't expensive like billboards or traditional marketing ways to reach people.”

The place has since evolved into more than a bookshop, becoming a venue for prominent authors to give readings, or for social events. 

“It was a community bookshop, our role is to convene and bring people together," she adds.

Beirut’s peak cultural years, Lana says, were between 2017 and 2019. Since then, a devastating economic crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic have had a negative impact as people’s priorities shifted. 

“We started doing a cultural monthly book club and I choose books that are simple, easy, and not very expensive. That was the idea behind the book club," she says.

“We wanted people to read and those who read to come and enjoy. Those who do not read, we would want them to be intrigued to join.”

The wide range of books includes novels and non-fiction, covering politics, philosophy, religion, history and more.

For now, Lana hopes Halabi will one day be able to expand. And, especially in the fleeting digital era led by the Kindle, Lana says a book can last a lifetime.

“There's like this intimate feeling that you have with a book, it's really a companion.”

Before opening his bookshop more than a decade ago, former political prisoner Hussein Yassin made a living selling books on a busy pavement in Downtown Amman.

Azbakeyeh, on a side road in Jabal Amman, has a modest exterior but houses one of the largest and most varied collections of used books in the Levant. Its shelves are stocked with everything from Agatha Christie novels in Turkish to works by Ghalib Halasa, an unheralded Jordanian novelist who died in exile in 1989. 

Establishing the bookshop was a great achievement but Yassin says it was only made possible by Iraqi archaeologist Behnam Abu Alsoof, a regular customer of his days selling books on the pavement.

“He used to overpay massively for the books he bought,” Yassin says. “He wanted to help me realise my dream.” 

Azbakeyeh’s development into a destination in Jordan’s relatively sparse cultural scene - particularly when compared with other Arab countries, such as Egypt and Lebanon - is also down to Yassin’s connections, and his strategy of not charging more than $3 for any book.

The knowledge he gained from meeting Abu Alsoof and other members of Arab diaspora communities in Jordan also helped. 

Waves of refugees from Palestine, Syria and Iraq have fled to the country since its establishment as a British protectorate in the 1920s. 

They improved the education system and helped speed up the circulation of culture in the country, which had only one university until 1984.

“The Iraqis, in particular, taught us how to read,” says Yassin.

Abu Alsoof was one of many Iraqi exiles who fled to Jordan after the 1990-1991 Gulf War. 

The two men became friends, partly because Yassin, who has an accounting degree as well as an engineering background, is also a voracious reader.

The Jordanian studied at Yarmouk University in north Jordan in the mid-1980s. It was a period marked by campus unrest with thousands of students protesting over high academic fees and the expulsion of dozens of their peers for their participation in a rally against American airstrikes on Libya.

Yassin was a student leader and was arrested by authorities, who used deadly force on campus. He avoids talking about the experience, instead pointing to books about political life in Jordan in that period.

Since opening Azbakeyeh in 2012, he estimates he has sold or given away roughly 1.5 million books.

The store is on a hill near Amman’s Third Circle. Except for books, it is sparse, and Yassin sits behind an old desk. A battered gas heater keeps him and his visitors warm in the winter months. 

He started by buying 100,000 books originally belonging to Raja Al Issa, a late Jordanian publisher and magazine distributor.

Issa sold his business to a courier company that no longer wanted the books.

Yassin bought the books from the courier company for $14,000 - less than 15 cents for each book. 

Among the collection were 1,000 Blue Guide travel books, which he sold in one go to a Jordanian tourist guide for $1.40 each, a cheap price compared with the going rate for such pristine editions on eBay.

Most books at Azbakeyeh sell for $1.40 to $2.80, and Yassin often gives them out for free at fairs to encourage reading, especially among young people. 

Shortly before the outbreak of Covid-19, Yassin gave away thousands of books in a single day at the Roman Theatre in Amman.

“I do business, but I am also pushing for a popular cultural revival,” says Yassin, who is encouraged by demand from young readers. 

Azbakeyeh has also become a disposal centre for those who inherit home libraries and want to sell or donate them. 

Among Yassin’s recent acquisitions were the libraries of a deceased chief judge, an archaeologist and a businessman who liked music.

In March, he attended a book exhibition at Amman’s solitary cancer centre, which was open only to staff. 

“One of the most well-read segments of society are those working in the medical field,” says Yassin, always trying to draw attention away from himself. 

“Books help them escape to another world.”

Mahmoud Madbouly cuts a forlorn figure sitting behind his tiny desk at the storied Cairo bookshop his father founded more than a half-century ago in the heart of the Egyptian capital’s downtown.

With a tinge of sadness, the 43-year-old’s words come out slowly and deliberately as he recalls the history of the bookshop his father left him and his siblings when he died nearly 25 years ago.

Madbouly speaks of the troubles facing the book industry as Egypt’s economic crisis bites deeper.

He muses on the shrinking number of Egyptians who can afford to buy books now and laments a Cairo downtown area that has degenerated from a posh shopping and entertainment district merely 20 to 30 years ago to a favourite hangout for the city’s young and poor.

“Egyptians just need monetary liquidity to read. Empower them financially and they will be reading books again,” Madbouly says at his bookshop, found several hundred meters away from the city’s Tahrir Square, the Egyptian Museum and the Nile.

“Those who can still buy books now just buy one, not four like they used to."

The story of Madbouly Bookshop is a compelling one. It recounts the astonishing rise of its founder, from a boy barely out of nappies selling newspapers on a Nile-side street in an upscale Cairo district to the builder of a major bookshop and a thriving publishing business.

The late Madbouly’s pavement newspaper spread, or “farshah” as it is known in Egyptian Arabic, soon morphed into a small bookshop in the 1950s across the street from Cairo’s famous Cafe Riche.

In 1970, he opened the bookshop that exists today.

With astonishing speed, it became Egypt’s best-known and most popular bookshop, a central hub for the nation’s now-declining readership and intellectuals. In many ways, it is also a bastion of knowledge that has thousands of books covering a wide range of genres, from science and philosophy to history, astrology, business and political science.

It’s this unique quality, says Madbouly, that has made the bookstore and its printing business a popular destination for some of Egypt’s famed literary figures, including Nobel Prize-winning laureate Naguib Mahfouz, and celebrated writers Gamal al-Ghitani, Alaa Al Aswany and Ibrahim Abdel Meguid.

“All of them started off with us and then left for greener pastures,” says Madbouly. “We have a reputation for building up reputations for young and unpublished authors and slowly make them superstars.”

Sitting at the bottom of an Art Deco building dating back to the 20^th century, the bookshop is spread over three levels separated by a handful of steps. The relatively small size of each level combined with a lack of adequate ventilation in the two lower levels give it a feeling of claustrophobia.

A whirring electric ceiling fan does little to alleviate the stifling atmosphere.

But, once browsers are acclimatised, they are often impressed by the range and number of books stacked on the shelves. Just as important, they also testify to the bookshop’s uniqueness.

“My father treated books like his own children. Our staff are so well read, they offer valuable counsel to shoppers,” he says, describing assistants at chain bookshops sprouting across Cairo and other major cities as “robots”.

“Cultured readers sometimes come in looking for books on specific topics. We find them the books they are looking for,” he says. “We are not merchants per se. Our bookshop is like a mission in the pursuit of knowledge. If we have a book that was selling for 50 Egyptian pounds [Dh5.90] many years ago, you’ll still buy it for 100 pounds today. In this regard, we are following in my father’s footsteps.”

Madbouly says he is uncertain how much longer he can keep up this ethos.

The pandemic hit the bookshop hard, emptying the streets and scaring people away from being indoors with others.

The damage was compounded by the economic crisis mainly caused by the fallout from the Russia-Ukraine war, now in its second year. The crisis is defined by a sliding currency and a dollar shortage that badly affects local industries relying on foreign materials, like paper for books.

One tonne of paper is now sold in Egypt for close to 65,000 Egyptian pounds (Dh7,715), up from 15,500 Egyptian pounds merely a year ago, according to Madbouly. With printing costs so high, the price of books has had to be marked up, putting them beyond the reach of most Egyptians, many of whom are struggling to make ends meet in the face of soaring food prices.

Consequently, the Madbouly book publishing business is slumping, printing an average of 20 to 25 titles a year since 2020, significantly down from around 175 to 200 a year, including translations.

“The volatility of the dollar versus the pound is impacting us. If the exchange rate stabilises, then I will be able to do the math for costs and retail prices,” says Madbouly, alluding to three devaluations in the last 12 months that shaved off 50 per cent of the Egyptian pound’s value.

Among the historic buildings and bustling crowds on Baghdad's Al Mutanabbi Street, is a treasure trove of knowledge that has stood the test of time.

Al Asriyah Bookshop, owned by 72-year-old Ayad Al Qamousi, has housed literature between its walls since it first opened in 1914. That it has endured all this time is a testament to the power of the written word and the unwavering commitment of the Iraqi people to preserve the past, enrich the present and pave the way for a brighter future.

“This bookshop is my whole life,” says Al Qamousi, standing among the hundreds of books and weathered volumes neatly organised on towering shelves and stacked on the ground.

The Iraqi father of four is the custodian of the landmark establishment, tasked with preserving its history and continuing its legacy in the face of numerous political and economic challenges.

“I feel that I’m part of the book. I can’t abandon the rich history of this bookshop whatever happens. I can’t abandon 109 years of history, leave it behind and stay at home,” he says.

Established by Mahmoud Hilmi, a businessman from Diyar Bakr in south-east Turkey, Asriyah Bookshop is the oldest in Iraq. Initially, it opened in Saray market – before Al Mutanabbi Street was built by the Ottomans in 1916. Once constructed, the new street became a prestigious avenue for government offices, military barracks and, eventually, nightclubs, coffee shops and commercial areas. In 1948, Al Asriyah Bookshop moved there, where it has been ever since.

It was then that the two-storey bookshop, which is almost 90 square metres, became a favoured destination for Iraq's renowned writers and influential figures, who both sold and purchased books there.

Hilmi also published the works of famous Iraqi writers and poets, including Mahmoud Ahmed Al Sayyid, a renowned novelist, translator and journalist, who died in 1937.

He owned the shop for almost 25 years until, in 1964, financial difficulties forced Hilmi to sell to Al Qamousi’s father.

A textile merchant, poet and writer, Al Qamousi’s father was also a lecturer at a hawza, a seminary where Shiite Muslim scholars are educated.

During his summer holidays, Al Qamousi would help his father run the business until he began working there full-time in 1974.

At the same time, Al Qamousi pursued academia, beginning his journey with evening studies at the Fundamentals of Religion College in Baghdad before earning a master's degree in manuscripts and historical document verification in 2007. In 2013, he completed a PhD in Islamic history and civilisation.

Today, when he is not manning the bookshop, he lectures at the privately owned Al Mustafa Al Ameen University.

However, the bookshop is where his heart truly lies and where he spends most of his days.

Inside, a portable air cooler and fan work in harmony to disperse a familiar scent of aged books throughout the room. The stillness and quiet of the shop are a welcome break from the busy streets outside, providing a sanctuary for readers.

When customers enter, Al Qamousi comes alive, warmly welcoming and guiding them through the shelves while offering recommendations. It is a communion of kindred spirits, who share an appreciation for the written word.

In March, the bookshop was cemented as an Iraqi cultural landmark with a visit from Unesco director-general Audrey Azoulay. 

“I’m famous in the street with my unique books,” says Al Qamousi proudly, picking up some of his oldest books whose weathered covers and yellowed pages betrayed their age.

Among them is The Diwan of Ibn Khafajah Al Andalusi, printed in Egypt in 1869. Another book, printed four years earlier in Baghdad, is Al Qarmani History on Islamic history.

From the overthrow of the Ottomans with the Arab Revolt and Iraq’s short-lived monarchy, to the rise and fall of Saddam Hussein and the threat of ISIS, Al Asriyah Bookshop has witnessed plenty of political upheaval since its doors opened.

When the now-banned Ba'ath Party began to strengthen its hold in the 1970s, the government centralised all book imports, exerting control over the market and banning a wide range of titles.

The most turbulent periods, says Al Qamousi, began with the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s and extended through to the first Gulf War, UN-imposed economic sanctions in the 1990s and the 2003 US-led invasion.

“Political circumstances have had a big impact, and they affect the book first,” he says, explaining how those changes impact the availability of certain books and readership habits. “We lived in a void from the 1980s to 2003 and this limited our work in general.”

After Saddam’s regime was toppled in 2003, “we found ourselves lost with the countable titles that we had access to", he says. Books that had previously been banned were suddenly available again and Al Qamousi felt as though they were behind the times.

Further tragedy struck in 2007 when a car bomb ripped through Al Mutanabbi Street's market, killing 26 and injuring dozens more. The bombing destroyed dozens of books, including valuable old publications printed by Hilmi, as well as the contents of two storage rooms upstairs.

Al Qamousi vividly remembers that day: “I was walking on ashes. This was something really painful,” he says.

Undeterred, he rebuilt the bookshop to continue his mission of disseminating knowledge to anyone in search of it.

Today, the bookshop faces a new challenge, he says, with the global shift towards online shopping.

While there was once great footfall at the bookshop – particularly in the 1970s and '80s – the ease of buying books online has had a serious effect on the number of customers who visit.

He says that demand for traditional large-scale book collections, known as dawrat, or the big volumes, has severely declined.

“Demand has gone down by more than 50 per cent since 2010,” Al Qamousi says. “Now, the dawrat have no value. Some only buy them for decoration to show off”.

However, he has noticed a recent “renaissance in book appreciation”, with renewed interest in novels and philosophy books among young people – a prospect that gives him great hope for the future.

He acknowledges the need to adapt to the digital age but laments the lack of time and assistance available to take his business online.

Although he offers home delivery, he encourages readers to visit the bookshop to “immerse themselves in the rich literary atmosphere it offers”.

Al Qamousi is also working on a project to print books on heritage and history.

“There are important studies that underline the importance of the value of Islamic and Arab history,” he says.

“We can’t separate heritage from present, but we have to live the future not to live the past.

“We have to live the future but to read the past and to know it.”