Islamic Art History : MANUSCRIPTS & PAINTINGS

The site provides an access to the Alphabetical list of Open Access Islamic Manuscripts Collections.

Selection of fully digitized Arabic manuscripts from the collections of the American University of Beirut. Includes descriptive entry with each digitized manuscript.

A collection of over 280 Islamic manuscripts, published texts, and maps dating from the 10th to 20th centuries CE, selected from Houghton Library and the Harvard Art Museum/Arthur M. Sackler Museum.

This site provides information about the Islamic medicine and science during the Middle Ages and the important role it played in the history of Europe. This site, with its biographies, colorful images, and extensive historical accounts of medieval medicine and science is designed for students and everyone interested in the history of Islamic and European culture. The site includes an extensive glossary of medical, scientific, and book-production terminology linked to the text. It also provides a catalogue raisonné (including images) from the 300 or so Persian and Arabic manuscripts in the National Library of Medicine.

The Database covers examples of the painted page dating from about 700 to 1900 CE from all over the Islamic world. Persian painting and Ottoman painting are especially widely covered but Arab, Sultanate, Mughal and other sources are all included. The Database includes illuminations, decorated Qur'an pages and book bindings as well as figurative paintings in manuscripts, albums and on single pages.

Manuscripts of the Muslim World is a project to provide digital editions of more than 500 manuscripts and 827 paintings from the Islamic world. The bulk of the collection consists of manuscripts in Arabic and Persian, as well as Coptic, Samaritan, Syriac, Turkish, and Berber. The primary partners are Columbia University, the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the University of Pennsylvania, with significant contributions from Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College.

A site for digital resources and projects in the field of Islamic Studies. Included in this roundup are manuscripts collections, digitized manuscripts, and manuscripts catalogues from universities and libraries around the world.

Digitized manuscripts from the largest collection of Islamic manuscripts in North America that includes 9,500 Islamic manuscripts, chiefly bound paper codices, containing a total of more than 20,000 texts.

Digitized manuscripts from the University of Edinburgh consists of Arabic and Persian manuscripts. Arabic manuscripts include commentaries on the Koran; traditions of the Prophet and Imam; prayers; law, general history and biography; medicine, mathematics, philosophy and ethics; and, grammar, rhetoric, poetry, prose, tales, dictionary, and controversy. Persian manuscripts include theology, history, biography, and travel; mathematics and astronomy; ethics, poetry, music, composition and proverbs, tales and romances; grammar and dictionary; and, agriculture and war. The Arabic and Persian manuscripts include the World history of Rashid Al-Din, and the Chronology of ancient nations of Al-Biruni, from the 14th century A.D. Hindustani manuscripts include history; poetry and tales; and, astrology. Turkish manuscripts consist of material acquired in Astrakhan and includes several early Ottoman texts, divans of Neva'i and items of dialectical interest. Included in the Oriental Collection are around 100 bundles or parcels of Buddhist works on palm leaves in Burmese, Pali, Sanskrit, Siamese, Tamil, and Tibetan. There are also Sanskrit charters on copper plates, and Oxyrynchus Papyri.

This site brings large collection of manuscripts of the Shahnama and a display of the miniature paintings in each one. It allows you to see and compare all the different depictions of a particular scene in the narrative and to explore text-image relationships across the corpus.

Collaborative initiative between Boston University and the West African Research Center (WARC) in part funded by the British Library’s Endangered Archives Programme. AAL is envisioned as a digital 'Library of Alexandria' of Islamized Africa, a continental open access public repository of aggregated Ajami materials.

The digital collection of Old Kanembu manuscripts (SOAS Digital Collection) provides an online access to one of the earliest written sub-Saharan languages in manuscript form. Old Kanembu written in Arabic script was a language of Qur’anic interpretation in the ancient Borno Sultanate. It has survived in marginal and interlinear annotations in the early Qur’an manuscripts dating from the 17th to 19th centuries and in various other religious texts dating from the 19th century to 1980’s

This Endangered Archives Program project identified six abandoned mosques in the towns of Cheno, Dera and in South Wallo, and 21 manuscripts were listed dating from 11th century-21st century.

This Endangered Archives Program project will salvage the manuscript collection held at the Riyadha mosque in Lamu, Kenya. The Riyadha mosque college was founded in the late 19th century and is one of the oldest continuously functioning Islamic teaching institutions in East Africa. From its inception to the present day, the Riyadha has drawn students from all over the region. The teaching tradition of the Riyadha mosque is closely linked with similar institutions in Yemen and with its offshoots elsewhere in East Africa. It thus not only represents a local teaching tradition, but a wider Indian Ocean tradition that over time came to epitomise East African Islam.

There are 2286 manuscripts in the Djenné Manuscript Library, containing approximately 150,000 pages. In addition there are the 2,885 manuscripts found during the Pilot Study. Many of these manuscripts will have to be digitized in situ at the home of the manuscripts owners.

A project aiming to digitize 93 manuscripts of Fulfulde jihad poetry (approximately 600 pages) by various authors. The bulk consists of 43 poems by Usman dan Fodio and 26 poems by his daughter Nana Asma'u.