Hazine recognizes that most archives and libraries are closed right now and emphasize prioritizing during these times the health and safety of all those who work at archives and libraries as well as the health and safety of those who use archives and libraries. We are publishing archive reviews in the hopes that eventually these repositories will be accessible again.
Finding pre-First World War Arabic printed books in European and American libraries is sometimes a complex business, involving navigating the online catalogs of different institutions, trying creative transliterations, and a good deal of luck. The major collections are well known – British Library, Bibliothèque national de France, Harvard, Yale, etc.. But, for a variety of reasons, people often overlook the New York Public Library, which had amassed one of the best (if not the best) collections of Middle Eastern books in America by the 1920s. In large part, this is because many of the books have not yet been uploaded to the online catalog and those that have been, can be quite hard to search because you need to have the transliteration right – e.g. it took me a long time to find the play لا اتزوج ولو شنقوني (la atzūj wa lū shankūnī). So, I hope it will be helpful if I provide a brief guide to using the Arabic books there, particularly those in the Schiff Collection.
Hazine recognizes that most archives and libraries are closed right now and emphasize prioritizing during these times the health and safety of all those who work at archives and libraries as well as the health and safety of those who use archives and libraries. We are publishing archive reviews in the hopes that eventually these repositories will be accessible again.
I spent most of the time at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (commonly known also as Vatican Library) looking at Arabic manuscripts related to the Eastern Christian communities active between 1500 to 1750, focusing on authorship, but also scribal practices, as well as ownership, reading and transmitting information as attested by the marginalia, colophons and other documentary notes that are commonly found in Arabic manuscripts.
Personally, I looked specifically at one collection that is held at the Vatican library, namely the collection of Arabic and Syriac manuscripts of the Catholic Syrian priest Paul Sbath (Aleppo, 1887, – Aleppo, 20 October 1946) that he sold to the Vatican in 1927. I both looked at the manuscripts and accessed the archive material related to the acquisition history of this collection.
Unfortunately, the restrictions regarding taking photographs inside the Vatican Library mean that I do not have any image of manuscripts nor interiors of the library to add to this post. Nevertheless, I think this aspect also adds to the uniqueness of this experience, that I will treasure forever in my private memories.
I am an independent researcher working on early Qurʾānic manuscripts and fragments written in māʼil and Kūfī styles, which dates back to the period from the 7th century to the 11 century CE. I blog at quranmss.com. I am fascinated, too, by illuminated and gilded Qurans from later periods such as those in naskhī, thuluth, rayḥānī, biharī, and ṣīnī scripts. I spend most of my time researching, writing, translating, collecting books and volumes, and following-up on recent conferences, symposia, and events associated with the codicological and paleographical studies of Qurʾānic manuscripts. In addition, I tend to make regular journeys to distinguished libraries, museums, and public exhibitions in the Middle East, Europe, and North America to keep myself updated with current literature, look for unexplored materials convenient for publication in my field of interest, not to mention locating out-of-print books and references. This is not always an easy task considering factors such as date of publication, how rare it is, and whether it is available in many libraries or not.
This year, I decided to visit the British Library (BL) in London to explore some of the non-digitized Qurʾānic materials, focusing my eyes on bindings, frontispieces, illustrations, scribal errors, marginalia, and other impressive features of handwritten documents. It was a productive journey as I anticipated it to be. As you may know, the BL has one of the largest and finest collections of Arabic manuscripts in both Europe and North America, with over 100,000 volumes of printed books, periodicals, and newspapers, in addition to more than 15,000 manuscripts works in 14,000 volumes, covering various subject matters. These include Quranic sciences and commentaries, hadīth, kalām, Islamic jurisprudence, mysticism and philosophy, Arabic grammar and philology, poetry, history, science, medicine, and many other subjects and themes. Moreover, the Arabic manuscripts at BL consist of two major collections: the Arabic manuscripts of the old British Museum Library and those of the India Office Library; formerly part of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office. These two historic collections, in addition to acquisitions made after 1973, were transferred to the newly-formed British Library in 1982.
In this blog post, I will be offering a detailed information guide—supplied by photographs and illustrations—to newcomers to the British Library, so they can thoroughly enjoy the experience and understand some of the requirements and regulations of the library before their arrival.
A large bronze sculpture of Sir Issac Newton displayed on a high plinth in the piazza outside the British Library in London. The work is based on William Blake’s 1795 portrayal of Newton, which depicts him sitting on a ledge while measuring with a pair of compasses (Photo Credit: Ahmed Shaker)
