Wellcome Arabic Manuscripts Online
The Arabic manuscripts collection of the Wellcome Library (London) comprises around 1000 manuscript books and fragments relating to the history of medicine. For the first time this website enables a substantial proportion of this collection to be consulted online via high-quality digital images of entire manuscripts and associated rich metadata.
http://wamcp.bibalex.org/en/homeGuide to Research in Islamic Art and Architecture, Harvard University
You can find it at: Guide to Research in Islamic Art and Architecture <
http://guides.hcl.harvard.edu/islamic-art>
Islamic Manuscripts
A useful compilation of links to institutions’ sites with digitized images of Islamic manuscripts:
http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/11445658/The Modern Art Iraq Archive (MAIA) Online Archive Educates and Encourages Public Participation to Trace Lost Works The Modern Art Iraq Archive (MAIA), located at
http://artiraq.org/maia/, was made public. MAIA started as the result of a long-term effort to document and preserve the modern artistic works from the Iraqi Museum of Modern Art in Baghdad, most of which were lost and damaged in the fires and looting during the aftermath of the 2003 US invasion of Iraq. As the site shows, very little is known about many of the works, including their current whereabouts and their original location in the Museum. The lack of documentation about modern Iraqi art prompted the growth of the project to include supporting text. The site makes the works of art available as an open access database in order to raise public awareness of the many lost works and to encourage interested individuals to participate in helping to document the museum’s original and/or lost holdings...Read more at
http://amirmideast.blogspot.com/2011/03/modern-art-iraq-archive-maia.html
Freidrich Sarre's Denkmaler Persischer Baukunst
The Boston Public Library is in the process of scanning all three volumes of Freidrich Sarre's Denkmaler Persischer Baukunst. Volume 3
(plates) are already available on Flickr.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/boston_public_library/sets/72157626063180603/Al-Qazwini's "The Wonders of Creation" NLM Adds Rare Persian Manuscript, al-Qazwini's "The Wonders of Creation," to Turning the Pages Interactive Interface The National Library of Medicine announces the release of a new Turning the Pages virtual book on its Web site <
http://archive.nlm.nih.gov/proj/ttp/books.htm>. The new virtual book is the
Kitab Aja'ib al-makhluqat wa Gharaib al-Mawjudat, literally "The Wonders of Creation," compiled in the middle 1200s in what is now Iran or Iraq. The vibrantly illustrated work is considered one of the most important natural history texts of the medieval Islamic world. The author, Abu Yahya Zakariya ibn Muhammad ibn Mahmud-al-Qazwini (ca. 1203-1283 CE), is known simply as al-Qazwini. One of the most noted natural historians, geographers and encyclopedists of the period, he was born in the city of Qazwin in Persia and received much of his education in Baghdad, the cultural center of the region. Al-Qazwini wrote most of his works in Arabic. This beautifully illustrated Persian translation was created in 1537 in the Mughal Empire, corresponding to what is now Pakistan and northern India. "The Wonders of Creation" is divided into two sections, focusing respectively on celestial phenomena, including the planets, stars, and angels, and the terrestrial world, including geography, ethnography, zoology, and botany. Al-Qazwini was primarily a compiler of information from different authors, both ancient and medieval, and made few original observations of his own. However, his flowing and understandable writing style and thoroughness on different topics made his texts popular and often quoted. The manuscript copy itself consists of 335 leaves of paper with more than 150 illustrations, in opaque watercolors and ink, of constellations, mythical figures, and various plants and animals placed throughout the text. The Web exhibition contains a selection of these pages, accompanied by explanatory text. The text is viewable by clicking the "T" in the upper left corner of the virtual book page. For more information see:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/news/turn_pages_persian.html Access to Mideast and Islamic Resources (AMIR)
ISSN 2160-3049
http://amirmideast.blogspot.com/
This project began as a consequence of a series of conversations in 2010 between Charles Jones and Peter Magierski at NYU about the need for a tool to assemble and distribute information on open access material relating to the Middle East. It uses Jones' Ancient World Online (AWOL) [http://ancientworldonline.blogspot.com] as a model. We welcome and encourage active participation and will add interested parties to the authors' list upon request. Notable entries include the Alphabetical List of Open Access Journals, which includes 256 titles as of May 2, 2011, and the Alphabetical list of Open Access Islamic Manuscripts Collections with 26 entries. You may subscribe (free of charge) to receive updates by email.
The Minassian Collection of Qur'anic Manuscripts
The Center for Digital Scholarship is pleased to announce that The Minassian Collection of Qur'anic Manuscripts can now be viewed at the
following url, http://library.brown.edu/quran. The collection, published out of the Brown Digital Repository (BDR),features 200 Qur'anic manuscript folios dating from the 9th to the 16th centuries. The flowering of Arabic calligraphy has its origins in the efforts of Muslim societies to preserve and disseminate thescriptural verses of the Qur'an. It is possible to browse the folios according to the name of the Qur'anic chapter represented, as well as by the date attributed to the item based on stylistic considerations. You may search these items by keywords that could include calligraphic style, techniques of illumination, materials, size, number of lines,and known parallels in other collections.Several of the items in this collection have been identified as belonging to manuscripts with folios to be found in other prominent collections. Consequently, a major impetus for the undertaking of this project is to foster the possibility for other such identification, a process of reuniting these manuscripts currently physically scattered around the world virtually through the digital medium. The digitization of this collection also opens up some alternativepossibilities for the visual and intellectual engagement with the objects. The high resolution of these scans allows the viewer to inspect the pen stroke and the way in which it manages to ink the page and leave its traces. Projects await students to cut up these images,overlay them, make them transparent and otherwise engage in creative juxtapositions and rearrangements. While the learning and studying of the Qur'an has been at the forefront of Muslim engagements with digital technology, what we hope to offer here is a way to reflect on a history of technology as it intersects with that foundational text as part of Islamic spiritual and cultural life.
The App "Oriental Books. Oriental treasures of the Bavarian State Library"Since the summer of 2010 the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek has been present in the mobile Internet, presenting an innovative offer: the App “Famous Books”. It was the world's first library to present digital copies of most valuable, outstanding items from its collections in the form of an App for iPads and iPhones. In 2011, one year later, the library presents the new App “Oriental Books. Oriental Treasures of the Bavarian State Library”, containing precious and remarkable books and manuscripts of the library’s famous and internationally renowned oriental collection. 20 items can be downloaded free of charge in the Apple App store and can be browsed from the first to the last page on the brilliant colour displays of iPads and iPhones. Oriental treasures which so far were hidden in vaults and usually were accessible for the interested public only rarely in exhibitions can now be admired anytime and anywhere. With the App "Oriental Books" the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek has achieved a further milestone on the way to the virtual library and again gives proof of its competence as innovation centre for digital information technology and services. We invite you to browse “The wonders of creation”, an Arabic illustrated manuscript, which is dated to 1280, “The prayer book of Düzdidil”, a Turkish and Arabic manuscript from 1845 or the renowned “Book of King”, written in Shiraz between 1550 and 1600. Welcome to the App "Oriental Books. Oriental Treasures of the Bavarian State Library”!
MENAdoc - Digital Collection of Middle East and North African StudiesThe German National Middle East and North Africa collection at the University and State Library Saxony Anhalt (ULB) in Halle has digitzed all volumes of the series BiIbliotheca Islamica with permission of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft and provides open access to the the respective volumes in the document repository MENAdoc
http://menadoc.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/ which is maintained as a module of the Middle East Virtual Library MENALIB.
http://www.menalib.de/ Vol. 19 of Safadi's "Lexikon" is accessible under
http://menadoc.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/ssg/content/titleinfo/702637 MENAdoc currently provides open access to 4.800 electronic fulltext documents/titles/volumes including all volumes of the Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft published before 2006 (a continuation of this is planed with a moving wall of 5 years). Updates on the digital contents accessible through MENALIB and MENAdoc Are announced in the MENALIB newsletter to which you can subscribe on the MENALIB website. The project of which Bibliotheca islamica (BI) online is part will be finished by the end of October. Then for all electronic copies also respective electronic catalog entries will be published and searchable in the lectronic catalog of ULB Halle, probably then also in Worldcat. Also, we hope to be able to have the BI online as searchable Arabic fulltext ready by then.
The launch of the
Filaha Texts Project and website at
http://www.filaha.org which focuses on medieval Arabic farming manuals and their manuscripts. The FTP should be of interest to those engaged in Arabic and Islamic Studies, Environmental History, Medieval History, Agricultural History and Traditional Knowledge. The FTP sets out to publicise the latest research on the Arabic Books of Filaha, providing bio-bibliographic profiles on each of the authors, including notices of all existing manuscripts, published editions, etc. Also provided are a number of Arabic texts and English translations, as well as various scholarly resources (bibliography, glossaries, articles, etc). At the heart of the Project lies a collaborative translation platform that allows a text to be translated by multiple translators at the same time. Ultimately, we hope to be able to publish facsimiles of the manuscripts themselves and full English translations. We encourage all those interested to register as members of the FT Network (see Community page) allowing them to participate in the Forum and Translation Platform. The FTP is conceived as a collaborative project. Any corrections/suggestions and contributions in terms of articles, images, content, etc. will be most
welcome.
New homepage for the MWNF Portal
www.museumwnf.orgOur portal homepage has been entirely redesigned to allow us to integrate new sections and improve orientation. Main updates and new components:
Virtual Museum: The Discover Islamic Art and Discover Baroque Art databases are now accessible directly from the portal homepage.
Discover Islamic Art: a spell check facility has been added to the Database entrance page listing all spellings used in Western languages for transliterated Arabic terms. The facility also allows access to the Virtual Museum's glossary.Partnership with the League of Arab States: Further to the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding with the League of Arab States, a specific section has been created to introduce our visitors to the League's history, objectives and activities. This section is available in Arabic and English.
MWNF Travel: Links from the portal homepage provide direct access to our tour programmes and local partner travel agent pages.
MWNF Books: Our entirely redesigned book platform offers a series of new products and services:
The Islamic Art in the Mediterranean Travel Books are now available also as eBooks in English, French, Italian and Spanish. A Print on Demand service is in preparation for titles that are out of stock.
MWNF new online program
New Program EXPLORE with MWNF is now online!
www.museumwnf.org or directly
www.explorewithmwnf.netExplore by Country for
Algeria
Egypt
Croatia
Czech Republic
Hungary
Italy (Province of Rome and Sicily)
Jordan
Morocco
Palestinian Territories
Portugal
Spain
Syria
Tunisia
Turkey
Our Special Programmes
Explore the Islamic Heritage of the Mediterranean
Explore Baroque
Explore Portugal
Special Programmes in Preparation
Explore the Great Collections of Islamic Art
Explore the Arab World (in cooperation with the League of Arab States)
Explore Tyrol (Austria)
The Yemen Manuscript Digitization Project
The electronic version of the bilingual booklet "Preserving Yemen's Cultural Heritage: The Yemen Manuscript Digitization Project" (Hefte zur
Kulturgeschichte des Jemen) by Jan Thiele and Sabine Schmidtke is now available online:
http://fu
berlin.academia.edu/SabineSchmidtke/Books/400869/Preserving_Yemens_Cultural_Heritage_The_Yemen_Manuscript_Digitization_ProjectWebsites and Online Resources for Persian Miniature/Shahnameh Studies: Compiled by
Jaimee.K.Comstock-Skipp@williams.edu http://www.asnad.orgwww.iis.ac.ukwww.e-corpus.orghttp://www.e-corpus.org/fre/ref/104595/AKM00264/http://www.e-corpus.org/fre/ref/98928/AKM00272/http://www.e-corpus.org/search/index.phpInstructions: you can search by languages of documents, and a new version of e-corpus will be available at the beginning of March with new possibilities and corrections of small informatics problems.
Walters Art Museum:
http://art.thewalters.org/viewgallery.aspx?id=1254;
http://www.thedigitalwalters.org/ ;
http://poetryprayer.thewalters.org/http://www.mcgill.ca/library/library-findinfo/subjects/humanities/islamic/manuscripts/http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/11445658/http://archiv.twoday.net/stories/11445658/http://mandragore.bnf.frInstructions: navigate through the "Classement thematique" link. Bibliothèque nationale in Paris: http://mandragore.bnf.fr/html/accueil.html
Instructions: click on "Oriental Manuscripts". Some manuscripts are listed with "illustrations" (and many others have never been reproduced). The search is by
shelfmark or by keyword. The best way is to use the "classement thématique". The British Library's "Images Online" database: http://www.imagesonline.bl.uk/
Instructions:-- search using keywords (e.g. Persian - 156 images; Nizami – 60 images; Shahnama - 45 images; etc.)-- registering on the website allows access to non watermaked preview images-- images are of selected pages; no whole manuscripts Bibliothèque nationale de France (B.n.F.) Mandragore, database of illuminated manuscripts of the B.n.F.: http://mandragore.bnf.fr/jsp/rechercheExperte.jsp Instructions: A search under country of origin (nom de pays): Iran turns up 185 manuscripts from Iran (incl. Arabic and Armenian MSS as well as Persian), each one represented by multiple images of illuminated pages.For searching the database, keep in mind that French romanization differs from the Anglo-American usage: Persian: French romanization: Chamseh English romanization: Khamsa(h) Clicking on the option "plein ecran" allows one to see full-screen versions of the images.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York:
http://www.metmuseum.org/works_of_art/collection_databaseInstructions: A search under the category Islamic art brings up 12,350 items. Refining the search can be tricky "miniature" brings up 15 items "painting" brings up 313 items (most but not all from manuscripts) "manuscript" brings up 712 items (not all of them illuminated); "codices" brings up 1,169 items (most entries with scanned images of at least a few pages)
The Freer/Sackler Galleries of the Smithsonian (Washington):
http://www.asia.si.edu/collections/search.cfmThe Walters Art Museum (Baltimore, Md.):
http://art.thewalters.org/viewgallery.aspx?id=1254(scans of 58 complete Islamic manuscripts, viewable cover-to-cover & downloadable)
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art:
http://www.lacma.org/collection/index.htmlMuseum of Fine Arts Boston:
http://www.mfa.org/search/collections?culture=7764&objecttype=10Harvard Art Museums:
http://www.harvardartmuseums.org/collection/Princeton University Library - Princeton Digital Library of Islamic Manuscripts:
http://library.princeton.edu/projects/islamic/index.htmlHarvard University Library - Islamic Heritage Project:
http://ocp.hul.harvard.edu/ihp/manuscripts.html (scans of more than 280 complete Islamic manuscripts, viewable cover- to- cover & downloadable)
University of Michigan Library - Islamic Manuscripts at Michigan:
http://www.lib.umich.edu/islamic/Yale University Library:
http://www.library.yale.edu/neareast/exhibitions/exhibit20071.htmlThe Vatican Library:
http://luxmentis.com/blog/?p=1249http://shahnama.caret.cam.ac.uk/new/jnama/page/Shahnameh Project at Princeton University:
http://etcweb.princeton.edu/shahnama/start.eplFitzwilliam Museum on the Epic of Persian King: the Shahnameh of Ferdowsi:
http://www.iranheritage.org/shahnameh_of_ferdowsi/default.htmhttp://www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/gallery/shahnameh/vgallery/section1.htmlBodleian Library:
http://www.bodley.ox.ac.uk/csb/OrientalSelectMSS2.htmHeroes and Kings of the Shahnama-Chester Beatty Library:
http://www.cbl.ie/ http://www.cbl.ie/getdoc/978b4189-77e2-43d0-ad1f-10282c74f7ea/Temporary-Exhibitions.aspxLes manuscrits arabes, géorgiens et syriaques du Monastère Sainte-Catherine du Sinaï (Egypte)www.e-corpus.org est une bibliothèque numérique patrimoniale collective coordonnée par le Centre de Conservation du Livre (Arles, www.ccl-fr.org) et co-financée par la Région Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur et l'Union Européenne. Il ya désormais plus de 1 000 000 de pages ou fichiers élecroniques à consulter sur E-CORPUS. ET plus 1 100 000 notices de Gallica (BNF) par le moissonnage OAI.PMH(après avoir lancé une recherche et lorsque les résultats sont affichés, vous pouvez élargir la recherche par moissonnage OAI.mph. Voir à gauche "élargir ma recherche : cliquer surGallica.OAI.pmh). Si vous voulez moissonner l'entrepôt OAI.PMH de E-corpus par votre bibliothèque numérique, nous contacter. Des nouveautés dans la bibliothèque numérique de E-CORPUS
Les manuscrits arabes, géorgiens et syriaques du Monastère Sainte-Catherine du Sinaï (Egypte) sont désormais consultables sur e-corpus. Ce travail a été réalisé par l'Université Catholique de Louvain dans le cadre du projet Manumed (numérisation des microfilms) ; les notices détaillées sont en cours de saisie avec saisie des titres et incipit etc.
MSS Arabes : 202 manuscrits / 50 987 images
MSS Syriaques : 130 manuscrits / 27806 images
MSS Géorgiens : 12 manuscrits / 3099 images
TOTAL: 344 manuscrits ; 81 892 images
contact:
info@e-corpus.org Turuz: http://www.turuz.info/ This site contains scanned copies of many of the most popular dictionaries, studies and Manuscripts in Oriental languages. The site itself is in Turkish.
The Virtual Museum Of Architecture from Turkey (
www.archmuseum.org /
www.mimarlikmuzesi.org). The Virtual Museum of Architecture created on the internet by the Building Information Centre constitutes the first step towards the creation of a real life Turkish Museum of Architecture, a project which has been on the agenda for many years but which has never come to fruition. This on-line Museum of Architecture consists of a comprehensive selection of the available documents and evidence illustrating the Turkish and global architectural heritage, making it possible to examine on the internet a great variety of documents once hidden away in the archives of various individuals and institutions and only now brought out into the light of day, thus creating a comprehensive inventory placing a valuable reference library at the service of students and researchers. It has been adopted as a matter of principle that the architects, buildings and various works in the Museum of Architecture exhibitions are chosen from sources recognised as basic reference sources and written by experts of the subject. Thus the aim is to make the Museum of Architecture a museum to be "read" as well as a museum to be "visited".
Tavoos Online - the first bilingual quarterly art Magazine. Tavoos - is a kind of mini-encyclopedia about Iranian arts: from architecture, archeology, cinema, and theater, to painting and sculpture. Tavoos Online also covers artistic activities of Iranian artists both inside and outside Iran. The art news section is regularly updated while the newsletter is sent to subscribers on a monthly basis. For more information see
www.tavoosonline.com.
Ernst Herzfeld Samarra Excavation
The Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives: Announcing the 100th anniversary of the Ernst Herzfeld Samarra Excavation! (
http://si-siris.blogspot.com/2011/01/100th-anniversary-of-samarra-excavation.html) It has been 100 years since German archaeologist Ernst Herzfeld began his groundbreaking excavation work on Samarra. In honor of the famous archaeologist's work, the Freer|Sackler Archives will chronicle specific sites and discoveries he made in his first campaign with material excerpts and links to digitized content. To get this exciting year-long celebration started, we are unveiling the new Samarra Resource page:
http://www.asia.si.edu/research/archivesSamarra.asp This page contains quick links to all of our collection items from the 19 archaeological sites of Samarra, and provides an eight minute tutorial on how you can use the Collections Search Center to search Herzfeld Samarra records. While you're browsing the images, make sure you look at the newly added Samarra Photographs!
Ernst Herzfeld cataloging project
The Freer Gallery of Art and the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery Archives would like to announce the imminent completion of the Ernst Herzfeld cataloging project and the subsequent availability of additional online resources. (
http://si-siris.blogspot.com/2010/01/ernst-herzfeld-online-resources.html)
The records primarily relate to Herzfeld's work from 1903 to 1947, in Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and Syria; and particularly to his excavations at Samarra, Pasargadae, Persepolis, and Sistan. From the original record content, the Archives utilized social media and basic web skills to produce and promote online resources. The post highlights several of these products including: an Image Gallery on Herzfeld (with geo-mapping in-progress), a Youtube video on how to search the records online, and a cache of previously written online articles and related resources.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Islamic Art OnlineIn recent months the team of the Islamic Art Department at the Metropolitan Museum of Art has worked without rest to update the present database on our collections. Since December 21, 2010 the entire collection – all 12,335 accessioned objects - are online, searchable with brief 'tombstone' data, and about 90% of them with photos: from miscellaneuos beads to the famous Nur al-Din Room; from unglazed 7th century Sasanian pottery sherds to 20th century Moroccan jewelry. Also all other collections of the MMA are also now on the web. While our masterpieces are for the most part well known, this new tool allows a far better and faster research on the mass products of material culture, such as textiles, oil lamps, beads, archaeological household items, and all the objects that need large numbers to work with. Our section of manuscript paintings allows one to browse through all what we have. Pay our new site a visit. This database will certainly change the way we work in the future:
http://bit.ly/hJ6p8v If this link does not work please go
http://www.metmuseum.org, "Works of Art", "Collections Database", "Islamic Art."
“Collaboration in Cataloging: Islamic Manuscripts at Michigan” project extendedThe University of Michigan Library’s “Collaboration in Cataloging: Islamic Manuscripts at Michigan” project staff are pleased to announce that our collaborative project to fully catalogue our IslamicManuscripts Collection has been officially extended through December 2012. This extension will allow us to complete the time-consuming physical examination of those manuscripts that have thus far only been examined in the digital environment by the project cataloguer, Evyn Kropf, and by our generous colleagues around the world. To date, this extensive digital examination - combined with physical examination efforts on the part of the project cataloguer and her cataloguing assistants, has resulted in 812 of the roughly 880 previously uncatalogued manuscripts being fully or near fully catalogued with detailed, data-rich records in our online library catalogue. 136 of these are in fact manuscripts for which digitization is not possible at this time.The extension will also allow us to continue receiving and archiving your contributions to enhance the cataloguing as you interact with the manuscripts and their descriptions via the project website
http://www.lib.umich.edu/islamic We greatly appreciate your support for the project thus far, and would be especially grateful for any further contributions you could make to the cataloguing of the remaining manuscripts, including review of existing descriptive data where available. These manuscripts still to be catalogued are listed on the project site here:
http://www.lib.umich.edu/islamic/archives/category/notyetcataloguedYour expertise remains an invaluable complement to our local cataloguing efforts. Treasures from the collection are still being unearthed, and we appreciate your continued participation in the cataloguing endeavors. We look forward to seeing your comments posted to the project site and thank you in advance for your valuable contribution to this project. As always, please feel free to forward any questions, comments and/or
suggestions to project staff at
islamic.manuscripts@umich.eduEcho (Sada) for Contemporary Iraqi ArtWe are delighted to announce the initial launch of the website for Echo (Sada) for Contemporary Iraqi Art. Visit www.echoiraq.org to learn about our programs, mission, and new developments. Echo (Sada) is a non-profit organization whose mission is to support
the generation, presentation, and preservation of contemporary Iraqi art. It was established to expand artistic possibilities through the support of new works, education programs, documentation and research. Echo’s long-term vision seeks to: organize exhibition and exchange programs for artists in Iraq and internationally; use digital and physical platforms to address new geographies of practice that integrate dispersed populations; facilitate trans-global learning and production; and build an archive of Iraq’s contemporary artistic work and related documentation.
Sharqiyya is a new E-journal in English published twice a year by
MEISAI and the Department of Middle East and African History at Tel
Aviv University. The journal is edited by research students and
invites faculty, graduate students, and independent scholars to take
part in a new and unique undertaking in the field of Middle East and
African studies and history. Sharqiyya's fall 2011 spacial issue on the Arab Spring is now available:
http://www.meisai.org.il/images/stories/sharqiyyafall2011.pdfThesaurus d'épigraphie islamiquehttp://www.epigraphie-islamique.orgThesaurus d'Epigraphie Islamique (formerly on CD-Rom, now on Web), new
issue : No. 10 : Inscriptions from South-East Asia (Burma, Brunei, Cambodia,
China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mongolia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam)
In the same issue are also included, updated:
No. 1: Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya;
No. 2: Arabian Peninsula (Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Oman, Bahrain);
No. 3: Central Asia (Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,
and Turkmenistan);
Nos. 4 and 5: Egypt;
No. 6: Indian world (Pakistan, India, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Maldives);
Nos. 7-9 : Sub-Saharan Africa, Irak, Western Europe (Spain, Portugal,
Italy, Malta, France)
Now altogether almost 23,000 inscriptions, with 6,000 photos of
inscriptions. The Thesaurus d'epigraphie islamique is designed and compiled under
the direction of Ludvik Kalus, Professor at the University of Paris-
Sorbonne and Directeur d'Etudes at Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes,
Paris. Carried out by Frederique Soudan, Chargee de recherche de la Fondation
Max van Berchem. Developed under the patronage of the Fondation Max van Berchem (Geneva).
The goal of the Thesaurus d'Epigraphie Islamique is to bring together all of the inscriptions in Arabic, Persian and Turkish (as well as in other "small" languages) from the Muslim world up to the year 1000 of the Hegira. The Thesaurus d'epigraphie islamique is a vital resource for historians, art historians and other specialists of the region. Operating under the major Web browsers (Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari, Opera, Internet explorer) , it performs searches quickly and easily by various criteria such as date, current location, kind ofinscription, site, type of support, material and more. By doing a word search in the Arabic text, it is possible to locate every inscription containing a particular word, in couple of seconds. For epigraphical and technical questions, please contact
epigraphie.islamique@noos.fr (Ludvik Kalus and Frederique Soudan).
A Catalogue of Islamic Manuscripts in Belgrade, Serbia
We are honoured to present you an electronic publication of a catalogue of Islamic manuscripts in Belgrade, Serbia. It has been a result of five years researching, identification and cataloguing more than 600 works written in Arabic, Ottoman Turkish and Persian. A great amount of various relevant information has been incorporated within this catalogue still unknown to scholars, experts and other individuals worldwide. It has been accomplished in English with ZDMG transliteration of Islamic terms and names. More than 400 images of various manuscripts facilitate a better insight of all manuscripts in the collection. The catalogue has been created as an electronic book, very easy to manage, to pass from one page to another and all connected with indexes of places of accomplishment, chronology, authors and copyists, and subjects according to which it is divided. Great attention has been dedicated to graphic design, as well, with an intention that a reader gain richer experience of the manuscripts. Oriental Culture Heritage Society. Please, take a look of this website:
http:/sites.google.com/site/acatalogueofislamicmanuscripts/homeE-corpus.org
The digital library www.e-corpus.org (coordinated by the Centre de Conservation du Livre, Arles, France) provides access to more than 1 300 000 pages of books, manuscripts and archives directly accessible on Internet. Most of the documents are related to the Mediterranean and Arabic-speaking worlds. Recently, the large archives collection of the French general Paul Levé (1859-1937) has been digitalized. P. Levé lived in Maghreb, he produced and collected many papers, and its collection is kept in the library of the Catholic University in Paris. It contains more than 40, 000 pages and has been completely digitalized and described for the e-corpus digital library project.
http://www.e-corpus.org/fre/ref/83954/ms_français_374_à_420/The whole inventory can be downloaded at
http://1.static.e-corpus.org/download/notice_file/422662/inventaire_des_archives_du_general_leve.pdfBayerische Staatsbibliothek for iPadBayerische Staatsbibliothek has a fabulous iPad application called "Oriental Books" available for free download at the Apple Application Store. It provides wonderful digital photographs of every page, including covers and doublures, of 20 of the most important manuscripts in their collection, including the 1227 Koran manuscript from Seville, the 1280 Qazwini, a Javanese- Arabic romance from 19th century Indonesia, etc. The images are so good that they can be enlarged to show tiny details, like laid lines, etc. For more information and links visit
http://www.bsb-muenchen.de/App-Oriental-Books-Oriental-Treasures-of-the-Bavarian-Sta.3026+M57d0acf4f16.0.htmlThe Yemeni Manuscript Digitization Initiative YMDIhttp://ymdi.uoregon.edu is a collaborative endeavor of research libraries
and leading scholars of classical Islam, Middle Eastern history, and
Arabic Literature whose mission is to preserve and make accessible the Arabic
manuscripts in the private libraries of Yemen. YMDI’s first project
is a freely accessible, online archive of digitized Zaydi manuscripts
hosted by Princeton University Library, to be integrated as part of the Princeton
Digital Library of Islamic Manuscripts (
http://library.princeton.edu/projects/islamic/index.html). When complete, this YMDI archive will include all the manuscripts of three private libraries in Sana'a as well as additional Yemeni Zaydi manuscripts from the collections of Princeton University Library and the Staadtsbibliothek, Berlin.
http://pudl.princeton.edu/collections/pudl0079Islamic Seals Database
The Chester Beatty Library is pleased to announce the launch of its Islamic Seals Database, an online, interactive database of seal impressions found in Islamic manuscripts. The site can be located at
www.cbl.ie/islamicseals or through the link on the Islamic Collections page of the Library’s website (
www.cbl.ie). Visitors to the site are invited to participate in deciphering the seals, identifying the individuals or institutions named, and providing information such as other sources of seals that name the same individual or institution. The database currently contains 150 seal impressions found mainly in the manuscripts of the Chester Beatty Library’s Arabic Collection but also in manuscripts from its Persian, Turkish and Indian Collections. New images will continually be added to the site until all seals in the Library’s Islamic manuscripts are included. We are happy to include seals from other collections if proper permission to do so and photographs are provided. The database has been set up as part of the Library’s Arabic Manuscripts Project, which aims to produce a comprehensive catalogue of the Library’s more than 2600 non-Qur’anic Arabic manuscripts (to replace Arthur J. Arberry’s existing eight-volume handlist produced in the 1950s and 60s). The usefulness of the site depends on your participation. So, after a long day of teaching, writing, studying, etc., why not relax by deciphering and identifying a few seals?
The Islamic Manuscripts of the Walters Art Museum: A New Digital ResourceA New Digital Resource for Historians of Islamic Art and Culture: The Islamic Manuscripts of the Walters Art Museum
With the help of a Preservation and Access Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and with additional funding from an anonymous donor, the Walters is pleased to announce the completion of its program to create digital surrogates of its collection of Islamic manuscripts and single leaves. All the data is licensed for use under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 UnportedAccess Rights,
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/legalcode Images are free for any noncommercial use, provided you follow the terms of the license. There is no need to apply to the Walters prior
to using the images. Highlights of the collection include a fifteenth-century Timurid Qur’an (Ms. W.563); a late seventeenth-century copy of the Book on Navigation by Piri Reis (Ms. W.658); and a sixteenth-century de luxe Mughal manuscript of Amir Khusrau Dhilavi’s Khamsa (Ms. W.624). As you will see, images were taken of all parts of the manuscript, including the binding, fore-edge, and spine. Text pages were imaged at 600 dpi; illuminated pages were taken at up to 1200 dpi. The manuscripts have been catalogued by Adam Gacek (Principal Cataloguer) and Amy Landau. The details are as follows. The data is up at:
http://www.thedigitalwalters.org/ The general ReadMe file is at: http://www.thedigitalwalters.org/03_ReadMe.html
The technical ReadMe file is at:
http://www.thedigitalwalters.org/04_TechnicalReadMe.html The easiest way to access the raw data is at:
http://www.thedigitalwalters.org/01_ACCESS_WALTERS_MANUSCRIPTS.htmlAs you will see, the Islamic Manuscripts are fully catalogued in XML according to TEI P5 guidelines. You will see English, German, Dutch, Armenian, Byzantine, and Ethiopian Manuscripts up there as well, but these have not yet been fully catalogued, so don’t expect any TEI for them yet: we are in the middle of that process. Obviously, although this is our core data, this presentation of the material is not primarily for the general public. We have two main portals for user-friendly derivatives of our data. All our illustrated pages we post on Flickr, for which check out:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/medmss/sets/ We also publish full PDFs for download of all our manuscripts on the Walters Website: For example:
http://art.thewalters.org/viewwoa.aspx?id=23935Just under the title of the manuscript, you will see that you can download the PDF. The PDF begins with a full human readable catalogue description of the manuscript, transformed as part of the PDF from the TEI XML.
Premodern Islamic cartography in the "History of Cartography" series (vol. 2 book 1: Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South Asian Societies) is now freely available online: http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/HOC/HOC_V2_B1/Volume2_Book1.html Three other volumes (vol.1 , and vol. 2 books 2 and 3) are also available:
http://www.press.uchicago.edu/books/HOC/index.html