Dakar, Jolof, September of 2026.

During the Islamic Golden Age, Baghdad was seen as one of the cores of knowledge, a center of Islamic learning and research, and that was due to one important factor, the House of Wisdom. The library was gigantic, and was destroyed in the 13th century by Mongols during the Siege of Baghdad. It contained works in philosophy, mathematics, medicine, astronomy, and optics, and it preserved rare books and poetry until its destruction.

The loss of the House of Wisdom represented the twilight of the Islamic Golden Age, which has never returned since then; the Grand Mufti of our Islamic Emirate believes that, as Muslims, it is our duty to contribute and collaborate, toil and sweat, until a new House of Knowledge is built.

Mufti Bahir called upon a meeting of the SCS for the construction of a new House of Wisdom; this time set upon the city of Tambacounda, a small, impoverished town located in the middle of Jolof; the Emirate’s leader personally calls it the “beating heart” of Jolof. The selection for the House of Wisdom was thorough, and many cities were considered, such as Dakar, St. Louis, Thiès, but Tambacounda was the most prevalent. Being set upon the beating heart of our Emirate, it is one of the key positions for our government. The revitalization of the city, with a boost in education, can mean that the entire countryside of Jolof can be bolstering with life as new universities and schools benefit from the massive library and collection of Islamic works.

With the selected location of Tambacounda, the Islamic Emirate has also decided upon the budgeting costs of it; assuming cost overruns, damaged materials, remuneration, accidents, equipment and labor costs, the House of Wisdom of Tambacounda - henceforth known as the HWT - will have an assumed cost of thereabout US$1.48 billion. This is, in comparison to the British Library, huge. The library in the UK, holding renown for its size and efficiency, had a budget of £511 million.

Costs and Architecture

The costs are justified however; the HWT will not only include a new, spacious library for maximum holding capacity of Islamic works, but it will also include a research wing, where international Muslim students of any Muslim nation can come and participate in research projects, attend to courses on Islamic history or participate in archaeological projects.

It also possesses an elaborate, intricate architecture based on the Abbasid Caliphate, intent to evoke a sense of wonder of the Islamic Golden Age, with arabesque panels. The general architecture has a lot of Kufic script, with phrases from the Qur’an and informative plaques set with enriched, golden letterings in the script.

The Abbasid inspiration for the architecture comes in the forms of many things, such as foliate decorations on arches, pendant vaults, muqarnas vaults and deliberate attempts to make an abstract form of decoration, avoiding the depiction of living things; in certain areas of the HWT, especially formal sections or crucial sections, stucco works will be colored in red and blue, incorporating glass mosaics whose light reflects upon the works being shown. This will be used a lot in areas where Qur’an relics are going to be displayed.

This project is easily covered alone, especially as our Islamic Emirate has been toiling night and day with the funding for new works, so another “dent” per-se in the budget would not surprise anyone, but still, the Emirate wants to make this an Ummah-wide collaboration; this means two things, detailed below.

Oversight

The planning and zoning will be done by a special, temporary committee. This committee, appointed by the Grand Mufti, vetted by the SCI and then verified and voted on by the SCS, will be called the “Grand Islamic Committee for the House of Wisdom”, politicians have called it, more aptly, the Committee for the HWT. This Committee will have the responsibility to ensure that corruption is impermissible in the construction of the House of Wisdom, for reasons stated below.

The HWT will have the duty to teach countless Muslim generations; it will receive foreign funding, and it will require metric tons of materials coming nationally and internationally. Our government is still recovering from the revolution, but the stability and the attention of the House of Wisdom is necessary to restore the calm in the international market and to convince the world of our peaceful intentions.

This means that regulations will be cracked down on, with special concerns being made through regular - and irregular - audits throughout the entire construction process; it’s estimated that the construction will begin in November 15th of 2026, and will end in December 11th of 2028. It could, theoretically, be faster, but the Islamic Emirate wants to ensure a careful process, with abiding regulations for structural safety, construction of further decorations and thorough staffing.

While all of our audits and regulations are public domain, the Islamic Emirate will make sure to deliver to the African Union, ECOWAS and the Arab League a document detailing the audits, reports on expenditures and whatever else is necessary, to ensure that transparency is our utmost concern.

Accessibility

The population of Jolof will have free, permanent access to the House of Wisdom, as long as they proclaim the Shahada whenever they enter, to assure the staff that they are respecting the knowledge of Islam and thus, allowed to obtain the knowledge of the Islamic literature inside. Outside Jolof, any government with a majority Muslim population is free to send their citizens to the House of Wisdom and, if they cite the Shahada, they will be free to participate as well.

The HWT will have an online website; in it, there’ll be a login and password section, when you register an account, there will be a small questionnaire of five question, which includes questioning of the user is a Muslim, if he has the intention of converting to Islam, if he is simply curious about Islam and if he is simply looking for more knowledge on Islam.

Depending on the questions, the system will redirect the user to certain online selections, such as a section for “Islamic converts” which include the Qur’an and other classical Islamic literature, or a section for “Seekers of knowledge” which includes basic history books on Islam, and key recommendations by historians in the field.

A program by the Jolof government will be created in cooperation with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation , along with special member states; the purpose of the program will be to allow paperwork-free access to the House of Wisdom if the person presents a passport which is accepted by the IEJ; a list will be made of the accepted passports in the future, but it accepts passport from any member state of the OIC.

Collaboration In Jolof

In Jolof, the collaboration for the HWT won’t come from granting money, no, but it’ll come from donations of ancient heirlooms. The Islamic Emirate will ask the population to grant them their trinkets and baubles from Islamic times, including literary works, ancient poems, and treasured possessions of their ancestors, which might include works in Arabic, books about Islam and other pious goods.

Those that do provide the Emirate with these goods will be rewarded with a blessing from an Imam and a small, bronze medal for their contributions to the Ummah and to the knowledge of Islam. These goods will be vetted and approved by the SCI according to their quality and their pertinence to Islam. If the goods rate too low on either, they will be returned to the donor.

Collaboration Internationally

The House of Wisdom in Baghdad was free for every Muslim to read and learn in, and this will be no different here. One of the key policies of our Islamic Emirate will be that in the HWT, any citizen who is a Muslim can easily come and go into the House of Knowledge, reading upon the copies and the books that are available for free.

For the governments of these Muslim citizens, the Grand Mufti will do a major two-month tour throughout the Islamic world, meeting with the governments and requesting a contribution to the HWT; this can be in many forms, from monetary to Islamic items, select national books, and anything else that the government is willing to contribute to the development of the HWT.

The intent of international collaboration on the construction of this library is to strengthen the ties of the Emirate and the international Islamic community, as a way of showing solidarity and to legitimize ourselves in face of international powers. The Emirate has no violent intentions and this must be shown in acts, such as the construction of this beautiful library, which will surely bestow knowledge and wisdom upon the Ummah.

Requesting the Aid

[M] In order to avoid a short diplomacy post on the requisition of financial or other types of contribution, I’d much prefer this to be a single post [/M]

[Diplomacy - Open Diplomacy. This will be through secure phone calls with the members of the OIC]

To the members that compose the upstanding organization that is the OIC, the government of the Islamic Emirate of Jolof is, with the intent of increasing the freedom of information, the right to an education and the international cooperation of Muslims, constructing a massive library, containing solely Islamic works of literature, Islamic poems, treatises, books, relics, to preserve the international history of Islam with a well-funded, well-staffed library.

Along with the library, a new wing is opening beside it to allow international members of the academic world to participate in state-sponsored archeological research, projects to preserve Islamic works, study new Islamic literature and etcetera.

A program will be made with the OIC, allowing the citizens from the member-states to present their passports and enter freely within the library; this means that they will be free to study, take copies of books and otherwise take in the wonderful experience of visiting one of the, hopefully, centers of knowledge in Islamic history that we shall have.

The total cost of it will be US$1.48 billion, assuming overruns and other expenses. It is not obligatory at all, in any shape or form, to donate money to the construction; if it is preferable, the nations can also send copies of relics, of books, or even a simple warm congratulations to us will be immensely welcomed. The contributions of the Ummah, regardless if it was a financial or physical donation, or even a congratulations, will be immortalized with the construction of a mosque, near the library.

Additionally we would like to mention that, in case donations exceed the total cost, I will leave it to the nations two options, a refund of the donation, or the proceeds being delivered to local mosques for charity donations.

Summary

In summary, the government of the Islamic Emirate is doing the following:

• The government has assembled an extraordinary session of the SCS to construct a new House of Wisdom.

• The selected location for the HW was Tambacounda, a small town in Jolof.

• The House of Wisdom will be free to peruse by anyone.

• The HWT will include a website for online pdfs of books as well.

• It will be entirely sustained by the Jolof government and will cost US$1.48 bn to construct, the budget for it will be US$450 million per year. The expenditures will be public domain and published on institutions such as ECOWAS, the OIC and the national website for the IEJ.