An Aleppo bookseller, 91, has spent four decades gathering a million volumes

Rizkullah Abd, who is 91, has spent close to 40 years assembling a collection of around one million books in his shop in the Tilel district of Aleppo, in northern Syria.

The shelves hold work in four languages — Arabic, French, English and German. Some of it is handwritten, some was pulled from lithographic stone, and some has been in print for over a century. Students, researchers and collectors come to him for titles that are no longer in print anywhere else in the city.

"I collect and preserve books that people no longer care about," Abd said. "Saving rare works from disappearing is a responsibility for me."

He carries a loss that no collection answers. His son was forcibly disappeared in 2012, and in the years since he has received no information about where he is.

"I ask God to give me the strength to continue collecting new books," he said.