Yemen: At Sotheby's auction in New York... the rarest Yemeni Torah scroll is offered amid controversy over the smuggling of heritage.

Arab Sea Newspaper - Follow-ups:

In a development that once again highlights the issue of smuggling Yemeni heritage and selling it in global markets, the international auction house Sotheby's in New York has announced its intention to offer one of the rarest and oldest Yemeni Torah scrolls known to date, in an auction to be held on December 17, 2025. According to radiocarbon dating results, the oldest parchment of the manuscript dates back to the period between 1425 and 1450 AD, i.e., to the late era of the Rasulid dynasty in Yemen, making it older than any complete Yemeni Torah version preserved to date, including the famous version in the British Library. The scroll consists of 76 parchment sheets written in Hebrew using the distinctive Yemeni square script, and includes 227 columns copied across multiple generations of scribes, making it a rare documentation of the evolution of the Yemeni Hebrew script through three main phases, including the ancient phase in which rare forms of the letters Shin and Qaf appear. According to Yemeni heritage researcher Abdullah Mohsen, the offering of this rare scroll in a public auction brings back to the forefront the issue of smuggling Yemeni manuscripts, which has sparked widespread controversy, especially after the smuggling of an ancient Torah scroll to Tel Aviv about a decade ago. Mohsen said that "the Yemeni state bears the historical and moral responsibility to protect Yemen's written memory," calling for official action to prevent the sale of this national heritage in global markets and its return to its original homeland. This step once again raises the growing concern among Yemeni researchers and activists about the fate of the thousands of Yemeni manuscripts and cultural treasures that have left the country during the years of war and chaos, in the absence of effective official protection mechanisms.