BEIRUT: The intriguingly titled “cabinet of curiosities” was a phenomenon born in Renaissance Europe. The “cabinets” were entire rooms containing collections, without much in the way of categorical boundaries.

They were designed to entertain and, in the case of noble collectors, display power. One of the most well-documented cabinets belonged to the 17th-century Danish physician Ole Worm. Worm’s cabinet included crafts, taxidermy, fossils, and a Scythian lamb – a mythical plant that was believed to sprout sheep as its fruit.

Beirut too has a cabinet of curiosities, one no less fascinating, albeit slightly less fantastical. Located on the ground floor of a quiet building in Tabaris, Bibliopolis is a shop owned by book-lover Antoine Abi-Heila. The store is artfully decorated with such curiosities as a framed Mussolini autograph, a late 18th-century Ottoman saddle and sword, and pairs of leather shoes from different periods in Abi-Heila’s life.

Although these items are interesting for their own sake, they can all be seen as a sideshow accompanying Bibliopolis’ main attractions. Not surprisingly perhaps, given the place’s name, these are books. The walls are lined with them. Glass cases display them. Abi-Heila and his wife Rita also restore them.

Abi-Heila specializes in the study of ancient texts written in Arabic, but his collection extends far beyond this genre. His latest acquisition is one of the largest-known non-decorative books. Some 500 years old, the antiphonal was hand-made by monks in the area of Savoy, in France. On its parchment pages are finger size musical notes.

Another highlight of Abi-Heila’s collection is what he says is “the first printed book to mention Beirut and Tripoli … It was written by a certain traveler Varthema [Luduvico di Varthema (1470-1517)], a friend of Christopher Columbus. Christopher Columbus goes east and discovers what he discovers. Varthema comes … to this area.”

The book, “Itinerario de Luduvico de Varthema Bolognese” was printed in 1515 and Abi-Heila’s copy, which has already been sold, has 19th-century binding. Abi-Heila says there are only two other known existing copies, one at The British Museum and the other at The Bavarian State Library. Written in German, Varthema’s book is best known as the first description of the pilgrimage to Mecca by a non-Muslim.

Arabic, French, Syriac, Hebrew, Latin and Geez (an ancient Ethiopian language) are only a sampling of the languages to be found inside Bibliopolis. Although some items, such as an Ottoman “perpetual calendar” and a papal decree from 1690 are kept under glass, Heila readily handles others, if carefully. These books are meant to be read.

Abi-Heila opens his texts on an ornate wooden stand, advising that “always when you open and hold a book do not open it wide because it could break the spine.”

As an adviser in book preservation who is married to a book restorer, Abi-Heila should know.

Inside Bibliopolis is also the workshop where the Abi-Heilas carry out the complex work of book and manuscript preservation and restoration.

“Restoration in books is not like restoration in art,” says Abi-Heila. “It is completely different because [with books] you have to see the restoration. With books you don’t have to create something invisible.”

He shows a specimen in which pieces of a decayed leather cover have been re-imposed on a modern binding. “You have to see the old and the new,” he says. “There are two schools [of thought about book restoration]. I am of the school to stop the degradation, but not to add artificial things [to a book]. It is better to stop the degradation, to make the book strong enough so that we can handle it and to turn the page. This is enough.”

Holding a 16th century book, Abi-Heila demonstrates how its fragile, torn paper pages have been repaired with visible acid-free tape that he calls “visible but discreet.”

Abi-Heila points to his own hairless head to demonstrate how he feels about the importance of authenticity in restoration. “It’s like me … If [you] put artificial hair on my head, this would be horrible.”

“It is [also] important that a restoration be reversible … when we do a restoration, we project for 200 years. In 200 years [a future restorer] can take this [tape out], and do it without any damage to the book or to the paper.”

Abi-Heila does minor repairs, but his wife Rita Abi-Heila is the expert book-restorer of the two. Her entry into the profession was somewhat accidental, dating from the days when Heila was a businessman and self-described bibliophile living in France.

“One day I bought some new books in auction and I put them on the dining table,” he recalls. “She came and she made a repair [on one] because she didn’t work at that time and she had time. I came and I said, ‘You cannot do this. You cannot use scotch tape.’”

Spurred on by this rebuke, Rita Abi-Heila studied restoration for four years in France. The two now work together on major restorations, which he emphasizes are only for serious collectors or museum pieces because they can be prohibitively expensive.

Bibliopolis is Abi-Heila’s early retirement. “I used to own and ride horses in France, and they cost $2,000-$3,000 a month. So I abandoned horse riding,” and opened Bibliopolis some 10 years ago, he says. “Commercially, it is not [viable] … For me, it is my pleasure. It is a passion.”

Other antiquarian book dealers are few and far between in Lebanon. He says a shop had recently opened “and I regularly went there to buy them and encourage them, but they closed.”

Seated inside his self-described cabinet of curiosities, Abi-Heila says that he has “some colleagues [who] are antiquarians, furniture [dealers], and sometimes they have old manuscripts. But I think [with books] as a specialization, [in Beirut] there is nowhere else [like this].”