In the past two decades, the extensive money allocated by religious institutions to their books and libraries section — alongside the foundation and expansion of educational centers — have turned the city of Qom into a rich source for books on religion, humanities and literature, not only in Iran but also in the region. Although the idea of hidden and banned books and libraries in the age of communication and expulsion of information is difficult to imagine, this phenomenon still has a substantial presence in the Hawza of Qom.

Almost all seminary libraries have a private section to which only very limited and controlled access is provided. In fact, the patrons are often not aware of the existence of these sections at all. These restrictions are on top of the normal strict restrictions that are in place, limiting the access of non-seminary students to these libraries. Additional restrictions are in place for female students who are allowed access to just some of the material, and then only during a limited window of time, and they are completely banned from gaining access to some of the libraries.

The most famous of these libraries is in the Imam Khomeini Institute, which is under the auspices of Ayatollah Mesbah-e Yazdi. This institution has two major libraries: the main library contains a large number of some of the most important works in the field of humanities and social sciences, mostly written in the three languages of Persian, English and Arabic. This collection exists as part of the project for “Islamization of Social Sciences.” The other section on the lower ground floor of the center is exclusive to a smaller number of institute’s scholars, and held in a separate section away from the library patrons, with shelves containing banned books. These are mostly the main literary works of Babism, Baha’ism and their predecessors such as Sheikhiyeh, and also included are some primary sources of other “heterodox religions,” as they are known in the Hawza.

These works, which include important manuscripts as well as lecture notes from the lectures of Mostafa Makkian, a former professor at the center who has now joined the ranks of the intellectual critics of the government, have been collected gradually. According to one of the organizers of the library, these have been acquired through the confiscation of the possessions of anti-revolutionary individuals, in the aftermath of the revolution. They were removed from the libraries of their owners and have been sent to the Mesbah-e Yazdi’s institute, where a decision will be made about them. The volumes were being kept in closed rooms until their sheer number and the uncertainty of the state of their management resulted in a decision to send them for recycling, resulting in their temporary storage at the center. However, the state of their storage and the lack of interest and attention to them resulted in even this decision being forgotten, thus keeping them in their current location.