The collection of the Bibliothèque Orientale at the Université Saint-Joseph in Beirut (USJ) is one of the largest and richest collection of Eastern Christian manuscripts. The collection is now cataloged in Reading Room, where there are 2,929 objects, including 18 volumes combining manuscript and print, as well as 11 printed works. The collection is mostly written in Arabic (2680), but there are also texts in Arabic Garshuni (137), Syriac (85), Ottoman Turkish (72), Persian (32), Armenian (7), and a few European languages.

The University was founded in 1875 by French Jesuit missionaries. Its manuscript library was originally a small collection of liturgical and theological texts moved from the Jesuit College in Ghazīr to Beirut the year of its establishment. The library was renamed “Bibliothèque Orientale” in 1894 under the supervision and direction of the Jesuit father, Louis Cheikho, who helped to acquire and collect the first large collection of manuscripts. The USJ collection is not exclusively a collection of Eastern Christian texts; instead, it encompasses a wide range of subjects, including texts by Muslim authors. In fact, the oldest manuscript held at the USJ is an estimated 10th-century fragment (USJ 2 00825) of Ṣaḥīḥ by Bukhari (the most famous collection of hadith of the Prophet Muḥammad). Some volumes of the collection were lost during WWI, but the institution remained intact, and the manuscript collection kept increasing to the present day. In August 2020, an explosion at the Beirut Port damaged the buildings of the USJ, but fortunately the manuscripts were not affected. Lebanon in situated in a critical and unstable political region, making its manuscript heritage at high risk of destruction and/or dispersion. View now