Digitized manuscripts from the Great Omari Mosque in
#Gaza
— one of the most important and oldest national library and archives centres in
#Palestine
211 manuscripts
25957 images
[open access]
Four Family Libraries in Jerusalem
1. Al-Budayrī family
A prominent Shāfiʻī family of Jerusalem. Includes both Shāfiʻī and Mālikī legal texts, treatises on Sufism, and prayer books, with a substantial number of texts collected from North Africa. Primarily in Arabic. Est. 1767 CE
The Debates between Ash'arism and Maturidism in Ottoman Religious Scholarship
A Historical and Bibliographical Study
By Yahya Haidar
Doctoral thesis (Australian National University, 2016)
[open access]
The Mashhad Codex
The most complete manuscript of the Quran from the first century of the Hijra, written in the Hijazi script - contains more than 95% of the text of the Quran.
A new facsimile edition will be published on 25 November 2023 by Astan Quds Razavi library in Iran.
Al-Aqsa Mosque Library
Located at the heart of the Old City of Jerusalem, in the southwestern corner of the al-Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) complex.
Founded in 1922 by the Supreme Muslim Council in Palestine headed by the mufti of Palestine, Hajj Amin al-Husseini.
Lab results confirm
"the manuscript is not from the 14th century, but dates to between the years 1040–1160 at the latest, shortly after the death of Ibn Sina in 1037"
Documentation and analysis of scholars' handwriting in Arabic manuscripts (5th/11th-10th/16th c.)
Contains 300 different specimen.
Published by Dar al-Basha'ir (Beirut, 2014)
[Thread with 2 entries from the book]
A Descriptive And Comparative Grammar of Andalusi Arabic
Edited by Institute of Islamic Studies of the university of Zaragoza
Brill, 2013
[open access]
Al-Furqān’s interactive map of World Collections of Islamic Manuscripts
A very useful resource.
Thanks to it, we know that four Arabic manuscripts found their way to Aotearoa New Zealand.
A milestone in the history of authorship in Arab Islamic contexts
Farīdat al-Ta'līf is the most extensive (615 pp.) Arabic treatise to date that treats authorship as an independent field of inquiry.
It speaks (pos. for the 1st time) of a ‘science of authorship’ ('ilm al-ta’līf)
Old Chinese print depicting the holy sanctuary at Mecca — date 1861 CE.
From Record of the Pilgrimage (Chao jin tu ji), a travelogue of a hajj journey from China by Ma Fuchs (1794-1863 CE).
The Aga Khan Museum (AKM681)
ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (d. 1731) on the medical benefits of tobacco
It dries the humors, removes phlegm, helps digestion, empowers the mind, useful against poison.
'We have not heard of anyone who has been ill or died of smoking tobacco'.
British Library (Add MS 19547)
Exciting new book in Ottoman book history
An examination of twin copies of the Maṭāliʻü’s-saʻāde dedicated to the daughters of the sultan Murād III (1546-1595) - both are directly mentioned with their names in these manuscripts, revealing their interest in the occult sciences.
Dīwān (poetry collection) by the 10/11th century Melkite Bishop of
#Gaza
, Sulaymān ibn Hasan al-Ghazzī
[Manuscript, Egypt, National Library, Taymūr 912 Poetry]
[open access]
ديوان سليمان بن حسن الغزي
The Legend of the Damsel Carcayçiona
A tale of a young princess who finds faith in Islam, composed in Aljamiado (Castilian Spanish written in Arabic script).
Found in a manuscript compiled in 1587 and discovered in 1884 in Almonacid de la Sierra, Spain.
Author unknown.
In Defense of the Bible
A misleading title to al-Biqā‘ī ‘s (d. 885/1480) treatise defending the use of the Hebrew Bible and the Gospels in interpreting the Quran.
This is a useful edition (Brill, 2008) but the “critical” version is yet to be published!
A Book about Books
By Anīs Mansūr (1924-2011), bibliophile & author of 170 books. His private library had 70,000 books in seven languages. Taha Hussein described him as “Egypt’s greatest reader”!
In this book (Cairo, 1988) he talks about his life with books
[link below]
McGill Library's Islamic Lithographs digital collection
750 lithographed volumes printed in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century
[open access]
Early European Geography in Ottoman Turkish
In 1733, Petros Baronian, dragoman for the Dutch embassy in Istanbul, published Risâle‐i Coğrafya: a tr. of Méthode pour apprendre facilement la geographie by Jacques Robbe (d.1721)
It was dedicated to Grand Vizier Hekimoğlu Ali Pasha
On the Value of the Arabic Language
By Thomas Erpenius (1584 – 1624), Dutch Orientalist, author of Grammatica Arabica (pub. 1613) among other works on Semitic languages and Islamic history.
Translated from the Latin by Robert Jones (1986)
Full text
Ottoman Book Culture
An edited volume on the Carullah Efendi manuscripts and their marginalia.
By Berat Açıl (Ed.) (Istanbul:
@ilmietudler
2015)
Carullah was an exceptionally learned Ottoman bibliophile who wrote important bibliographical notes in his books.
Ibn al-Muqaffaʿ (d.759 CE) on early rock inscriptions
The great care of the ancestors to preserve knowledge for later generations was to such an extent that 'if words of true insight and wisdom occurred to a man while in uninhabited area he would promptly inscribe them on rocks'
Sezgin Online
Digital access to Fuat Sezgin's renowned Geschichte des arabischen Schrifttums (GAS), the largest bio-bibliography for the Arabic literary tradition
Requires institutional (or paid) access to BrillOnline Reference Works
A significant contribution to the history of authorship in the Arabic scholarly tradition.
Concepts of Authorship in Pre-Modern Arabic Texts
Behzadi, Lale; Hämeen-Anttila, Jaakko (Eds)
Bamberg : University of Bamberg Press, 2015 (Bamberger Orientstudien ; 7)
@uni_bamberg_of
Arabic printing in Malta 1825-1845
Its history and its place in the development of print culture in the Arab Middle East
By Geoffrey Roper
Doctoral thesis, Durham University (1988)
[open access]
)
Librarians in Abbasid Baghdad were certainly well fed!
Daily food provisions at the Mustanṣiriyya Library [est. Baghdad 1233 CE]:
The keeper: 10 raṭl (ar. 4 kg) bread, 4 meat.
His supervisor/asst: half of that.
Shelving asst: 4 raṭl bread w. a portion of cooked food (stew).
First Arabic edition of Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra: A Book for All and None
Translated by Felix Faris (1882-1939), prominent Lebanese activist, journalist, poet and close friend of Kahlil Gibran.
Published in Alexandria (1938)
Kitāb Ṣuwar al-kawākib al-thābitah or Book of the Constellations of the Fixed Stars
by ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Ṣūfī
Copied in Mosul (566 AH/1170 CE)
Contains most of the 48 Classical Constellations both as they appear on the celestial sphere and on the celestial globe...
Decorated pages with a lantern motif from a 17th-century Chinese Qur'an
'That is because among them are priests and monks and because they are not arrogant' 5:82
British Library (Or.15256/1, ff. 55v-56r)
The Medici Oriental Press (Typographia Medicea)
Founded in Rome in the 16th century by Ferdinand de Medici and granted a monopoly from the papacy to print books in foreign languages; it produced some of the earliest books printed in Arabic.
First thirty years of Arabic printing in Egypt, 1238-1267 (1822-1851)
A bibliographical study with a checklist by title of Arabic printed works
By Hsu Cheng-Hsiang
Doctoral thesis (University of Edinburgh, 1985)
[open access]
The Genius of Arabic Authorship
Kamal Nabhan
A serious and extensive analytical study of the Arab Islamic heritage [Kuwait, 2015 - 600 pp.]
It studies commentarial patterns, intertextual relations with a fascinating sociological look at intellectual exchange in Islamic history
Frontispiece of Simon Oakley's 1708 translation of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan by Andalusian polymath ibn Tufail (d. 1185 CE), which includes an interesting 'marketing' note highlighting the age of the treatise:
'Written in Arabick above 500 Years Ago'!
4. Al-Zāwiyah al-Uzbakīyah
The Uzbek Cultural Center in Jerusalem, contains manuscripts collected by the Naqshbandī shaykh ʻAbd al-ʻAzīz al-Bukhārī. Works on Sufism, law, and Arabic language, including significant collections in Persian and Turkic languages.
The Eight 'Headings' of every book introduction -
according to al-Maqrīzī (d. 1442)
Aim الغرض
Title العنوان
Usefulness المنفعة
Position المرتبة
Authenticity صحة الكتاب
Genre من أي صناعة هو
Division into parts كم فيه من أجزاء
Methodology أي أنحاء التعاليم المستعملة فيه
The Memoirs of a 20th-Century Publisher and Bookseller from Baghdad
This book is a fascinating personal account of trials, tribulations and triumphs of a prominent Arab publisher: Qāsim al-Rajab (1919-74), founder of Maktabat al-Muthanna in downtown Baghdad.
Arabic types in Europe and the Middle East, 1514-1924
Challenges in the adaptation of the Arabic script from written to printed form
By Emanuela Conidi
PhD thesis (University of Reading, 2018)
[open access]
The new critical edition of Kâtip Çelebi's Kashf al-ẓunūn by B. A. Ma'ruf and E. İhsanoğlu (London:
@Alfurqan_arabic
2021) [10 vol.]
Statements by its editors re: countless errors & confusions of the author have generated controversy in some Arabic scholarly circles.
A Muslim Critique of the Christian practice of offering Easter Eggs
2-folio manuscript by ʿAlī b. Sulṭān al-Qārī of Mecca (d. 1014/1606)
"The origins of this heinous act date back to the early Zoroastrians (al-Majūs) and was adopted later by (despotic) church authorities".
Variance in Arabic Manuscripts
Arabic Didactic Poems from the Eleventh to the Seventeenth Centuries - Analysis of Textual Variance and Its Control in the Manuscripts
By Florian Sobieroj
De Gruyter, 2016
[open access]
2. Khalidī Library
Established as a library open to the public in 1900. Includes extensive collections of Ḥanafī law and treatises on Sufism, grammar, and other topics, primarily in Arabic.
3. Isʻāf al-Nashāshībī Library
A Center for Culture and Literature, much of its collection was acquired from the Ḥusaynī family. Includes collections on Ḥanafī law and Sufism, primarily in Arabic.
Anti-Printing Polemic from Morocco
Printing technology continued to be viewed with suspicion by Muslim scholars into the early 20th century.
The Marrakech-based Muhammad b. Ibrāhīm al-Sibā‘ī (d. 1332/1914) wrote a treatise in praise of pens, inks & manuscript production ..
Indian Muslim scholar Shiblī Nomānī describing the printing presses of Constantinople in 1892 CE.
There are many presses.
Best quality presses in Beirut (still the case!)
The typewriter (الآلة الكاتبة) was invented by the Turks.
Egypt and India print on ‘shoe cleaning paper’!
The kingdom of the book: the History of printing as an agency of change in Morocco between 1865 and 1912
By Fawzi Abdulrazak
PhD Thesis (Boston University, 1990)
In his ferocious critique of Louis Awad (1914-1990), Egyptian scholar Mahmoud M. Shaker (1909-1997) coined the term «الشرلتة» (from charlatan)
He used it to denote what he saw as Awad’s attempt to subvert Arabic literary heritage under the guise of European ‘modernity’:
Tuḥaf al-khawāṣ
13th-century Andalusian treatise in inkmaking, dyeing, pigment manufacture and many more techniques for scribes and craftsmen.
By Abubakr Muhammad al-Qalalūsī
Translated by
@joumajnouna
May, 2022
Mu'allafat al-Ghazali
Abdurrahman Badawi's seminal bibliographical study of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (d. 1111 CE)
Includes a detailed list of 450 authentic, doubtful and apocryphal titles
First published in Cairo, 1961.
[free access -- 2nd ed. 1977]
A message from the author to the reader - 1952
1. If you like the book, don't read it for free - the author desperately needs the money.
2. Unsigned copies are unlawful.
3. Help catch the 'worms that live off the brains of writers' by reporting illegal copies.
Arabic Printing for the Christians in Ottoman Lands
The East-European Connection
By Ioana Feodorov (Romanian Academy, Bucharest)
Volume 1 in the series Early Arabic Printing in the East by
@degruyter_pub
Published open access on September 29, 2023
'This work on waḍʿ (semantics) has been completed through the help of the wāḍiʿ (coiner of language = God) by this waḍīʿ (humble) student...'
نجز الوضع بعون الواضع على يد الوضيع
Colophon by a young scribe from Mosul, Norther Iraq (1100 AH/1689 CE)
Arabic Firsts
The first to write ‘from so-and-so to so-and-so’ was Qus bin Sa‘ida (d. c. 600 CE)
The first to write at the end of a kitāb ‘written by so-and-so’ was Ubayy ibn Ka‘b (d. 649)
From Suyūtī’s al-Wasā’il (p. 131)
An early Arabic papyrus dating to 643 CE, found in Heracleopolis (Beni Suef, Egypt). Considered the oldest dated Arabic text using the Islamic era.
Austrian National Library (Archduke Rainer Collection, PERF 558)
Cursing the scribe!
Out of frustration, a later hand wrote the following under the title of this Arabic MS:
‘May God curse the copyist for his utter ignorance and negligence’.
Kitāb al-Masālik wa-l-Mamālik by Ibn Khordadbeh (d.913 CE) - Bibliothèque Nationale d'Algérie (1548)
Pages from an Arabic-Latin lexicon, created by William bedwell (1561–1632), a priest and scholar of Arabic.
Presented to the Cambridge University Library (MS Hh.6.1) by the author in 1631.
The first single work dedicated to ’authorship’ in Arabic is arguably al-ta'rīf bi‘ādāb al-ta’līf by Mamluk polymath al-Suyūtī (d. 1505).
It’s a short (4 fols) collection of statements on تأليف and تصنيف beginning in al-Jāhiz (d. 868) to Suyūtī’s own teacher Ibn Hajar (d. 1449)
13th-century Index of all Islamic books
1. Muhammad al-Sharīf (d. 671 AH / 1271 CE) was a Damascene scholar who went by the surname al-Nāsikh (the Copyist).
In this MS, he confirms that he saw - while at the Nizāmiyya madrasa in Baghdad - an index (fihrist) of 56,000 books.
Allah's Sun -> Arab Sun -> Islamic Sun
1. German scholar Sigrid Hunke (1913-1999) enjoyed great renown in the Muslim world following the publication of her 1963 book Allahs Sonne über dem Abendland: Unser arabisches Erbe [Allah's sun over the Occident: our Arabian heritage].
Upcoming conference on rare Maghrebi Andalusian manuscripts preserved in libraries and MS. collections around the world
Casablanca, Morocco (16-17 May, 2023) — sessions held in Arabic
The Gist of the Islamic Instrumental Sciences
Zubdat at-taʿrīfāt
by ‘Uthman ‘Azmī b. Ahmad
Istanbul, Matbʿat Menafi Umumiye (1293 AH / 1876 CE)
A beautifully crafted lithographic print comprising summaries of various branches of Islamic sciences, with many useful ‘mind maps'
The largest reference work on the Islamic commentarial tradition
Jāmi‘ al-shurūh wal-hawāshī by Yemeni historian Abdullah al-Habshi
Mutūn texts are arranged alphabetically.
Commentaries, super-commentaries, glosses follow in chronological order.
New critical edition of al-Zahr al-laṭīf fī masālik al-ta’līf by Qāsim al-Qaysī (1876-1955), grand mufti of Baghdad in late Ottoman Iraq.
It explores authorship conventions and styles in the Arab Islamic scholarly tradition, and relevant manuals, auxiliary disciplines, etc.
“
#Gaza
has no gates, no fortifications, no defences of any kind; and
yet from its position, one would
think it had more need of them than
any other town in Syria.”
Handbook for Travellers in Syria and Palestine (London, 1868 — p.251)
Rare publication by the Chaldean Press in Mosul
Wonders of God
A book on the life of Gerard Majella (1726-1755), Italian lay brother of the Congregation of the Redeemer, patron saint of expectant mothers
Translated into Arabic by Immanuel Rassam (pub. in 1931)
Arabic translation of the Bible - printed in Rome 1673 CE
preserved at the Iraqi National Museum
From the private collection of Ya'qub Sarkis (1875-1959), prominent Iraqi author, historian and bibliophile. He was born in Baghdad into a Christian family of Armenian heritage.
Tea in Moroccan Literature
Tea became widely consumed in the Maghreb from mid 19th c. through English traders who brought it via Gibraltar.
This short fascinating work surveys the mentions of "tea" (الأتاي) in a variety of prose and verse writings
New publication on Ottoman Turkish Codicology by
@TDV_ISAM
(2022)
Tenkitli Neşir Kılavuzu (Osmanlı Türkçesi Metinleri İçin)
Manual for Critical-Edition (For Texts in Ottoman Turkish)
Prepared by Berat Açıl, Sadık Yazar, Kadir Turgut & Özgür Kavak
The Zaqqūm tree of hell.
Miniature from the Miraj Nameh manuscript, written in Chagatai using Uyghur script (circa 1436-7 CE).
Bibliothèque nationale de France (Turc 190, fol. 53v)
Searching for the Islamic Episteme
The Status of Historical Information in Medieval Middle-Eastern Anthological Writing
By Dagmar Riedel
Ph.D. Thesis (Indiana University, 2004)
[open access]
Among Arabic Manuscripts: Memories of Libraries and Men
By influential Russian Arabist I.Y. Kratchkovsky (1883-1951)
Arabic translation by Muhammad M. Mursi (Cairo, 1969)
[full book in link below]
The most valuable part of the library’s collection consists of approximately 2,000 manuscripts and 74 historical Arabic newspapers and magazines titles from the region.
A shining sword against plagiarism
Al-Bāriq fī qaṭʿ al-sāriq is the 2nd book by al-Ṣuyūṭī (d. 1506) – after al-Fāriq [the diff. between the author and the thief] – related to copyrights in Islam.
This is the best critical ed. - by
@DrAlanees
A three-volume study of scribal and authorship trends during the 7th/13th and 8th/14th c. focusing on fiqh and ’usūl literature.
By ‘Abd al-Rahmān al-Muzīnī (Medina, 2000).
* متابعينا الكرام
يسعدنا إعلامكم بأن المركز قام بتحديث موقعه الإلكتروني الجديد وذلك من خلال إتاحة البحث في فهارس المخطوطات والمطبوعات داخل وخارج نطاق دولة الإمارات ، وبذلك يستطيع الباحث من أية دولة في العالم الاستفادة من الفهرس الإلكتروني لموقع المركز
The manuscripts of the Great Mosque in Sanaa (Yemen) can now be obtained through a form recently uploaded on the library's official Facebook page:
for more info visit:
1- إصدار جديد :
كتاب فلسفة اللون في ا��إسلام...لصديقنا الفاضل المحترم الأستاذ كريم إفراق حفظه الله ورعاه ، ولصديقنا الفاضل المحترم أطروحة جامعية عن أبي القاسم القندوسي...تحت إشراف المستعرب الفرنسي فرانسوا ديروش ، وأطروحة دكتوراه حول الكتاب في مملكة المغرب الحجرية ،