The first modern recognized discovery was in 1947 by Bedouin herdsmen. The reputed discoverer was a boy at the time named Muhammad ed-Dhib, or Muhammad the Wolf, a member of the Tacâmireh tribe. In another version there were three of them; Khalil Musa, Jumca Muhammad and Mohammadan ed-Dhib. He (they) claimed to be looking for a lost goat.
Most of the scrolls are of leather (parchment) and many were wrapped in linen and stored in earthenware jars with 'bowl-like' lids. One scroll on copper was eventually discovered. Some were written on papyrus.
The total number of scrolls collected in this initial round of discovery is uncertain. Various sources claim that from three to seven or eight complete parchment scrolls were eventually taken to a local sheik. He directed the Bedouin to a shopkeeper named Khalil Iskander Shahin (Kando) a member of the Syrian Jacobite Church. Kando contacted another Church member named George Isaiah. Kando and Isaiah then visited the original cave themselves and removed additional scrolls or fragments.
George Isaiah reported the discoveries to his ecclesiastical leader, the Archimandrite of the Syrian-Orthodox Monastery of St. Mark in Jerusalem, Mar Athanasius Yeshua Samuel, the spiritual leader of the Syrian Jacobite Church in Jerusalem. Just when this occurred is not clear, although April 1947 has been suggested.
Part of the Bedouin's share of the Scrolls was sold to the Muslim sheik of Bethlehem. Kando purchased the remaining scrolls and in turn sold them to Mar Athanasius Yeshua Samuel for £24. This consisted of four scrolls originally thought to be five, but one of them was merely broken in half. These four scrolls consist of one twenty-four foot long copy of the book of Isaiah, the "Genesis Apocryphon', a commentary on the "Book of Habakkuk', and the so-called 'Community Rule'.
Other subsequent discoveries by bedouin and others are also included under this rubric, whether on parchment, papyrus or copper. Most of the known scrolls are now housed either in the Shrine of the Book or in the Rockefeller Museum in East Jerusalem.
Rumors of an underground scroll market for private collectors cannot be discounted and it is entirely possible that the entire library from the West Bank caves, if it could be collected together, would exceed the size of the known library by a wide margin. How the privately held scrolls might be located and purchased remains an interesting dilemma for modern scholars and presumably for the 'investors'who originally purchased them.

This definition is in context to Dead Sea Scrolls. See more contextual defintions for Dead Sea Scrolls.