BAGHDAD -- On a rundown street of auto repair shops in old Saddam City, a Shi'ite mosque run by men in tattered clothing has become a secret safe house for Iraqi treasures.

Now that coalition forces are arresting looters in the streets, the mosque's leaders say their story can be told: Contrary to widespread belief, the antique books of Iraq's National Library were not stolen by thieves last month but were removed for safe keeping by self-appointed guardians of Iraq's cultural heritage.

Inside a cavernous room at the Al Hak Mosque in the newly named Revolution City, roughly 400,000 manuscripts, biographies, religious works, and graduate-school theses are stacked to the 12-foot ceiling and gathering dust in the dry, 95-degree heat.

In the Judaica-Hebrew section -- a small pile against the southern wall -- one history book about Jews in Iraq dates to 1872, and a Talmudic text to 1880. There are newspapers recording the revolutionary days of July 1958, when the British-installed monarchy was overthrown and replaced by the republic. One book of folklore was largely indecipherable to the men at the mosque, but they said it was almost 500 years old.

''We had to protect the Islamic and Arabic heritage, so we acted before Baghdad fell to chaos,'' said Mohammad al-Jawad al-Tamimi, the mosque's imam. ''These books, it concerns the whole country.''

On April 15 the National Library was looted and set ablaze, compounding the agony of many who cherish Iraq's role as an early, important civilization, and those mourning the loss of precious antiquities from the National Museum. At the time, the media reported that the library was forsaken.[...]