The National Archive has put on display nearly 400 historical documents that were recently purchased for 46 million Afs in an effort to prevent the historical items from being smuggled from the country.

The documents will be on display for five days, starting March 14th, at the exhibition named "The Footprint History."

The national archive, which was established 50 years ago, stated that the historical documents and writings were collected and purchased because of a "national call from the people."

However, the archive lacks the required modern equipment to digitize the documents.

The purchased documents and writings include copies of the Holy Quran, literature from known Persian poets, as well as writings in Pashto, Turkish and Uzbek. Some of the documents are up to 1,000 years old.

“If we didn’t start the campaign, many of the 400 documents would have been smuggled,” said Afsar Rahbin, head of the archive. “We expect the budget to allow a fair allocation for the collection of archive documents.”

Abdulhaq Noori, a master’s student of art, praised the move and said the country’s historical documents need to be preserved.

“It is a big achievement for Afghanistan; I have not seen such documents in the last 20 years,” Noori said.

Before acquiring the 400 documents, the national archive had 100,000 historical documents and 7,000 writings, but none of them have been archived digitally.