[5][1] The building was restored in 792AH/1389CE as the burial site (turba) of Amir Husam al-Din Barkah Khan,[2][8] a military chieftain of Kwarizmian origin, and his two sons.

This son established a waqf; giving the revenues of Deir al-Ghusun and a mosque and a tomb (turba), now the Khalidi Library, for "the cure of the sick and the preparing of the dead for burial in Jerusalem.

"[9] The Khalidi family's long-time prosperity and prominence in Ottoman and Arab society enabled them to collect and preserve one of the finest private libraries in Palestine.

Sun Allah al-Khalidi, Chief Secretary to the Religious Court of Jerusalem until his death in 1726, was responsible for securing the foundation of the early collection.

[5] Shortly before his death, Sun Allah al-Khalidi set up a waqf, bequeathing revenue from his substantial land holdings across Jerusalem to pay for the trusteeship of eighty-five manuscripts in perpetuity.

[11] The establishment of the Khalidi Library as a public institution was made possible by a vast sum bequeathed to Hajj Raghib al-Khalidi (1866-1952) by his grandmother, daughter of the kazasker of Anatolia.

[4] According to historian Lawrence Conrad, the Khalidi family saw themselves as upholding the inherited tradition of the Greeks and Abbasids in founding a library to spread their wealth of knowledge.

[7] The reopened Khalidi Library will offer workshops on book-binding, calligraphy, and manuscript restoration aimed at engaging not only academics, but the wider Jerusalem public.

[6] The Khalidi Library continued in the classical tradition of Islamic learning in its collection of religious works and valuable manuscripts.

However, the Khalidi Library departed from classical tradition in its accumulation of works concerning the histories and ideas of Europe, "thereby marking a nascent cultural trend in Palestine," as noted by historian Ami Ayalon.

At least 1,138 printed books existed in the library's collection upon its establishment, the vast majority of which were imported from Egypt, Lebanon, and Europe.

This collection was expanded over the years to include dictionaries and grammar books on all major European languages, multiple translations of the Bible, the complete works of Plato and Voltaire, texts by Josephus, Dante, Milton, Shakespeare, as well as studies by Western Orientalists.

[1] The oldest dated manuscript is an 11th-century treatise on sharia as written by a member of the Maliki school of Islamic legal thought.

One makrumah is a gilded tribute to Saladin, dated to 1201 and grandiloquently titled The Spacious Lands of Commendations and the Garden of the Glorious and Praiseworthy Deeds Among the Merits of the Victorious King.