Middle Eastern Studies: Manuscript Resources

Open Access Manuscripts Collection: Manuscripts in St. Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai

The Foundations of Faith Collection will include important works from many religious traditions, particularly Judaism, Islam, Christianity and Buddhism. They include some of the earliest Qur'anic fragments on parchment, the first known Qur'anic commentary written in Persian, an important selection of devotional works and mystical treatises and an outstanding collection of theological works including the unique extant copy of the Kitāb al-Tawhīd by al-Māturīdī. (From website).

The collection is focused on manuscripts from the Middle East in Arabic.

David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library in Duke University

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. (From Website)

This site is part of an ongoing project to fully catalogue the Islamic Manuscripts Collection at the University Of Michigan, Ann Arbor.

This collection consists of 200 manuscripts with just over 300 works. In addition to 5 autographs, the highlights of the collection include: the earliest dated manuscript in the collection (Arab O. 013) a dated copy of a unique arrangement of a rare treatise written by al-Ṣāḅib Tāḡ al-Dīn (d. 707/1307) produced in the year of the author's death; two rare Mamluk treatises on horsemanship (Arab F.2); and an anonymous compilation (Arab O. 027) about the lives of the outstanding men who lived in Medina in the 12th/18th century.

Leiden University Library has a world famous collection of Middle Eastern Manuscripts. Its core collection is brought together by, among others, the Leiden Orientalists Joseph Justus Scaliger and Jacobus Golius. Included in the Scaliger collection are about a dozen manuscripts which belonged to Franciscus Raphelengius. These collections consist of extremely rare, sometimes unique, manuscripts.. The publication consists of 267 Arabic manuscripts in 303 volumes, amounting to 109.517 pages, in full-colour, images.

The Middle East Materials Project (MEMP) preserves collections in digital and microform format of unique, rare, hard to obtain, and often expensive research material for Middle East studies. It also preserves deteriorating printed and manuscript scholarly materials. The geographic scope of MEMP coverage includes Arab countries, Israel, Turkey, Iran, and related areas not covered by other cooperative materials projects.

This project features Miniature paintings from the estate of Mrs. Adrienne Minassian. The paintings often include text from Persian and Indian tales. Many of the illustrations within the Minassian Collection are depictions of stories from the classical Persian text, Shahnama of Ferdowsi.

This database catalogues the holdings of over 200 Qur’anic manuscript folios dating from the 9th to the 16th centuries housed within the special collections of the Brown University libraries.

The Princeton University Library has some 9,500 Islamic manuscripts, chiefly bound paper codices, containing a total of more than 20,000 texts.

With its emphasis on the history of science and the transmission of knowledge across time and geography, the Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection brings together many of the great scientific and philosophical traditions of the ancient and medieval worlds. Documenting the extraordinary achievements of scholars, philosophers, and scientists active in pre-modern Europe, Africa, and Asia, the collection illuminates the foundations of our shared intellectual heritage.

Complete sets of high-resolution archival images of entire manuscripts from the collection of the Walters Art Museum, along with detailed catalog descriptions.