Lebanon’s bookshops keep literature alive

On International Literacy Day, established by UNESCO in 1966 and marked every September 8th, few countries have a stronger claim to the day's spirit than Lebanon. Long before Beirut became known as the Arab world's publishing capital, the Maronite monks of Qozhaya, tucked into the Qadisha Valley, installed what is widely credited as the first printing press in the Arab world in 1585, producing a Syriac Book of Psalms in 1610.

Roughly a century and a half later, in 1734, Deacon Abdallah Zakher's press at the Monastery of Mar Yuhanna in Khenchara printed Mizan al-Zaman, the first book ever printed in Arabic script on Lebanese soil. From those mountain monasteries to Beirut's 19th-century printing houses and its long-standing reputation as a regional hub of publishing and education, Lebanon's relationship with the written word runs centuries deep.

On this year's Literacy Day, that legacy lives on in three very different bookshops, one an old Beirut institution, one a family shop reinvented for a new generation, and one a quiet village landmark,  each fighting, in its own way, to keep the printed book alive.

Librairie Orientale: Resilience since 1948

Librairie Orientale traces its roots to 1946, when Bechara Nehme opened the shop's first location in downtown Beirut's Place de l'Étoile, establishing it as a cultural cornerstone of the capital from the outset. Maroun Nehme told The Beiruter that his father opened the first shop before the civil war's deadly demarcation line tore the city into two halves just meters from his doors.

“The shop witnessed destruction, looting, and burning during those years," he explained, alongside many other downtown institutions caught in the fighting.

Today, the shop's Hamra branch remains especially known for its strong selection of Arabic, French, and English non-fiction, including hard-to-find historical and political titles. Nehme also pointed to the shop's long-standing connection to another Beirut institution entirely: the Bibliothèque Orientale, or Al-Maktab Al-Sharqi, founded in 1875 by the Jesuits of Saint Joseph University. Though the two are frequently confused because of their similar names, he was careful to stress that they are separate entities, even as their histories have periodically intersected.

Asked what has allowed the bookshop to survive nearly 80 years of upheaval, war, occupation, and now Lebanon's economic collapse,  Nehme kept his answer brief. "Resilience has many meanings," he said. "There is resilience through adaptation and progress, but there is also resilience through preserving the institution itself." Today, that resilience takes the form of two active locations, in Msaytbeh and Sin El Fil, alongside early efforts to move into digital publishing partnerships, a hedge against a future he believes will require Lebanon's publishing sector to cooperate regionally rather than rebuild in isolation. "We need to bring our efforts together, create new spaces, and develop new sectors based on the areas in which Lebanon has historically had a strong presence," he said.

Halabi Bookshop: Cultural hub

Halabi Bookshop's story began somewhere unexpected: a grocery shop belonging to Karim Halabi's grandfather, which carried a small newsstand section selling comics and periodicals like The Five Adventurers and Superman. In the 1950s, Halabi's father expanded that modest corner into a proper book collection, inspired by seeing people abroad reading everywhere,  on trains, in parks. The shop stayed open through the wars of the 1970s and 80s, sustained partly by daily newspaper sales, before closing around 2016 when the space became too cramped to function.

Rather than let the shop disappear, Karim and his sister took a leap. "We left our jobs and decided to revive the bookshop and transform it into what it is today," he told The Beiruter. The rebuilt store now carries books in Arabic, English, and French, hosts children's and adult reading sessions, and participates in the Beirut International Book Fair.

Halabi is especially focused on children's reading habits in a digital-first world.”If you take the phone away and put a small bookshelf in front of them, then the book becomes what is within their reach." Beyond retail, the shop also builds curated libraries for schools and organizations, including partnerships with the National Library and Assabil.

Bayt al-Kitab: A home

In a small town far from Beirut's commercial bustle, Shafiq Tarabay built Bayt al-Kitab, literally, "the House of Books" on a simple premise. "I never wanted it to feel like a shop where you simply buy something and leave," he said. "I wanted it to feel like a house." Decades later, some of his shelves hold books older than the customers browsing them, many arriving after families brought in boxes belonging to a father or grandfather who had passed away.

For Tarabay, those old books carry stories beyond their printed pages. "Sometimes you open one and find a name written on the first page. Or a date. Or a dedication," he said. "That is one of the beautiful things about old books. They preserve traces of people." He's watched reading habits shift with technology, but doesn't believe the desire to read has disappeared, only that attention is more divided than before. Asked what keeps a shop like his relevant today, his answer was direct, “ a bookshop is not only about selling books. It is about keeping books alive." His hope for Bayt al-Kitab's future is modest and personal. "I hope that when I am no longer here, someone will still open these books and read them."

A book is an inheritance

Librairie Orientale's institutional resilience, Halabi's reinvention across three generations, and Bayt al-Kitab's devotion to memory each represent a different answer to the same question: what does it take to keep a book,  and a reader, alive? None of these booksellers describe their work as nostalgia. All three describe it as necessity. In a country that gave the Arab world its first printing press nearly 450 years ago, these bookshops remain, in their own words, houses built to be entered, not simply visited, but lived in, and carried forward as an inheritance.