Mann Samarai at Dar Al Hikma 

This article is part of our ‘Welcome To Somers Town’ feature

LONDON’S last Arabic bookshop began on a trolley, wheeled up and down Edgware Road in the 1980s selling poetry, politics and novels shipped from Cairo and Beirut.

The city’s Arabic-speaking diaspora needed books, and Hazim Alsamarai knew how to get them.

When both the trolley and his flat in Somers Town were overflowing with stock, he took over the lease from a retiring antiques dealer in Chalton Street and set up shop.

That was in 1991, and Dar Al Hikma – meaning house of wisdom – has been a destination for Arabic readers ever since.

Hazim’s cousin and fellow director, Mann Samarai, has worked there since 2000, when he came to London from Iraq in the aftermath of the Gulf War.

“I needed a better future,” he told the New Journal.

Mr Samarai (pictured), in his early 70s, is known around Somers Town not just as a friendly face in Dar Al Hikma but also for bringing greenery to the neighbourhood.

Trained as an agricultural engineer, he plants and prunes honeysuckle, roses, and olive trees in flower beds around the area.

“This is the only bookshop of its kind left in the country, maybe even in Europe,” he said, citing the closure of Al Saqi Books – a Westbourne Grove landmark specialising in Middle Eastern literature in 2022.

But it has not always been easy for Dar Al Hikma – Brexit took its toll on European exports and while the bookshop once made more than £30,000 in-store each month, most sales are now online.

Low council rent means the shop can carry on, and it is visited by students and academics from around the world as well as locals and tourists browsing the shelves.

Dar Al Hikma continues to go to book fairs in Oman, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Egypt – although sometimes they have to be careful about what sorts of literature they bring.

“Before we go to a book fair, we must give a list of titles – and if any title does not support that government, it is illegal,” he explained.

Those books stay in Chalton Street.