The library, which was known then as Khedivial Kutub Khana, was first located at the ground floor of Prince Mustafa Fadel's palace in Darb Al Gamamiz.

In 1904 a new building in Bab Al Khalq opened its doors to the public housing both the National Library and the Museum of Islamic Art.

In the 1970s, a newer building was built on the Corniche, with an adjacent one for the archives, but Bab Al Khalq Library is still functioning and houses a museum.

National Library and Archive head Abdul Nasser Hassan estimated that the losses would be around $2.81 million in repairs.

Showcases and displays containing irreplaceable ancient manuscripts and papyri within the library's museum exhibition area were damaged along with all the furniture in the building.

Of Egyptian Islamic materials, there is perhaps the outstanding collection of illuminated manuscripts of the Qur'an in the Mamluk text-hand, and in Trilinear and Rayhani hands.

The library also has a large collection of medieval Arabic coins from as early as AD 696, which were published by Stanley Lane-Poole, Bernhardt Moritz and recently by Norman D. Nicol, Jere L. Bacharach and Rifa'at al-Nabarawy in 1982.