Islamic Studies Research Guide

The Arabian Gulf Digital Archives (“AGDA”) is an online archive that has been created to showcase historical and cultural material that tells the story of the rich, intriguing and complex history of the Arabian Gulf.

The Arabic Papyrology Database is a tool enabling you to access the editions of Arabic documents written on different material such as papyrus, parchment or paper. Those productive editions are an often-unraised treasure for almost every aspect of Islamic history up to the 16th c. A.D. The APD comprises a total of 12738 documents. For 4179 out of these, we give both the full text and the metadata, while for 8559, we give the metadata only.”

Cambridge University’s Taylor-Schechter Cairo Genizah Collection, along with the Mosseri Genizah Collection are available through the university’s library website. The Cairo Genizah, in addition to preserving a vast collection of medieval Jewish manuscripts, contains thousands of documents relevant to the social and economic history of the Mediterranean and the Middle East from the tenth to thirteenth century. In addition to the large archive digitized at Cambridge, /the Bodleian Library at Oxford, the John Rylands Library in Manchester, and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America also have significant portions of the Cairo Genizah.”

Select Manuscripts from the British Library (on-going). “From the pocket miscellany (Add.MS.27261), with its exquisite miniature illuminations, compiled in 1410-11 for Timur's grandson Sultan Jalal al-Din Iskandar, ruler of Fars, to unique historical documents and literary manuscripts, the Persian Manuscripts collection at the British Library is one of the most significant collections in the world in both size and importance. Consisting of over 11,000 works in almost as many volumes, it combines the two world-class collections of the British Museum and the India Office Library. These manuscripts originate from the whole of the Persianate world, in particular Iran, Central Asia and India and range in time from the 12th century to recent years, representing most of the traditional fields of humanities and religious studies. Many of the Persian manuscripts are copies of rare texts, with examples of some of the finest illustrated Mughal, Timurid and Safavid paintings.”

Digital Persian Archive. An image database of Persian historical documents from Persia and Central Asia from the Middle Ages down to the 20th century.

Through the Islamic Heritage Project (IHP), Harvard University has cataloged, conserved, and digitized hundreds of Islamic manuscripts, maps, and published texts from Harvard’s renowned library and museum collections. These rare—and frequently unique—materials are now freely available to Internet users worldwide. IHP is made possible with the generous support of Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal.
For the IHP, Harvard’s Open Collections Program (OCP) has produced digital copies of over 280 manuscripts, 275 printed texts, and 50 maps, totaling over 156,000 pages. Users can search or browse online materials that date from the 10th to the 20th centuries CE and represent many regions, including Saudi Arabia, North Africa, Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, Iran, Iraq, Turkey, and South, Southeast, and Central Asia;
o languages, primarily Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish; also Urdu, Chagatai, Malay, Gujarati, Indic languages, and several Western languages; and
o subjects, including religious texts and commentaries; Sufism; history, geography, law, and the sciences (astronomy, astrology, mathematics, medicine); poetry and literature; rhetoric, logic, and philosophy; calligraphy, dictionaries, and grammar, as well as biographies and autobiographical works.”

“ISMI is a component of the Rational Sciences in Islam (RaSI) project centered at McGill University, including an object-relational database created to store information on the rational sciences within the scientific, philosophical, and theological traditions of Islam before 1900 CE. ISMI catalogues basic metadata and content data of all manuscripts in the exact sciences in Islamic (astronomy, mathematics, physics, geography, mechanics, and related disciplines). Through the internet, this material will be accessible without charge both to researchers and experts in the field and to the educated public worldwide. This online database will contain the works of some 2,126 people (authors, annotators, copyists, correctors, dedicatees, illuminators, illustrators, inspectors, owners, patrons, students, readers, teachers, translators) who span the entire Islamic world from Islamic Spain to India and the borders of China, beginning in the eighth century and continuing until the nineteenth. To date, images of circa 3,400 codices from throughout the world (from repositories that include Turkey, Iran, Europe, the Middle East, and North America) have been collected and are ready to be linked to the database with information on 3,741 titles and 12,901 witnesses to these titles.”

Manuscripts of the Muslim World will include digital editions of more than 500 manuscripts and 827 paintings from the Islamicate world broadly construed. Together these holdings represent in great breadth the flourishing intellectual and cultural heritage of Muslim lands from 1000 to 1900, covering mathematics, astrology, history, law, literature, as well as the Qur'an and Hadith. The bulk of the collection consists of manuscripts in Arabic and Persian, along with examples of Coptic, Samaritan, Syriac, Turkish, and Berber. The primary partners are Columbia University, the Free Library of Philadelphia, and the University of Pennsylvania with signifiant contributions from Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College. This collection is funded by the Council on Library and Information Resources.

Scanned versions along with OCR text of rare Arabic periodicals from the 20th century.

“These rare Persian manuscripts, lithographs and books comprise works in many disciplines, but historical and literary works are dominant. A number of these items are exquisitely illuminated anthologies of poetry by classic and lesser known poets, written in fine calligraphic styles, and illustrated with miniatures. Many also have beautiful bindings. A number of the illuminated books are multilingual works, which include Arabic and Turkish passages in addition to Persian, focusing on scientific, religious - philosophical and literary topics, and others are holy books important to all confessional traditions within the Islamic world.”

Primary Sources: Middle Eastern Manuscripts Online 1: Pioneer Orientalists provides rare, digitized Arabic manuscripts from the Leiden University Library. Pioneer Orientalists has rich Arabic content with over 300 digitized volumes in full color, resulting in over 500 Arabic texts. It can be searched in English or with Arabic transliteration. Available at Qatar National Library

Primary Sources: Middle Eastern Manuscripts Online 2: The Ottoman Legacy of Levinus Warner is an online publication that contains 45, 809 pages of Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, and Persian texts. These manuscripts were collected by the great scholar himself during his stay in Istanbul from 1644 until his death in 1665.