Under normal circumstances, many of us would be deep in archival work that usually characterize our academic summers. Although COVID safety measures prevent us from traveling to research sites and accessing physical archives, it doesn’t mean we have to stop developing our projects. Countless digital and open access resources are available to historians who are for the time being at home and to those for whom travel may be an issue now and in the future. As a scholar of modern Egypt, precarious access to archival material is a constant factor; so, in addition to in-person research, I also regularly consult online sources. I’ve compiled a brief list of some of these online repositories in hopes it can help researchers working on nineteenth and twentieth century Egypt who are currently looking to diversify their source base or need access to primary sources.
This 2015 list features many important resources. Another list with resources is at our Online Archives and Resources page, updated January 2020.
hathitrust.org: This is the most important digitization project in human history. Google went around the United States and digitized the entire collections of dozens, perhaps hundreds of university libraries. Anything no longer under copyright is available, which generally means material older than one hundred years. Many of the most important Arabic scientific magazines from the late nineteenth- and early twentieth centuries, for instance, including al-Muqtataf, al-Hilal, al-Mashriq, have recently been made available here. And the most remarkable feature: keyword searchable. Ten of thousands of volumes that were previously only available in a handful of libraries in the world are now some of the easiest sources to access.
Hathi Trust Website
2. ULB Sachsen-Anhalt:An enormous collection of some 3,050 volumes of printed Arabic, Ottoman and Persian (and other) books that date from the end of the sixteenth century to the early twentieth, digitized by the Middle East and North Africa Special Area Collection of The Universitaets- und Landesbiblithek Sachsen-Anhalt in Halle. The project began in 2010 and is ongoing. WorldCat does not search its contents, so be sure to search them separately. The material is searchable by keyword, author, genre or place of publication. This includes many of the earliest printed editions of Arabic and Syriac texts, such as Bar Hebreas and Ibn Kathir. The digital collection also includes a vast number of volumes of Latin, Italian, French German and English literature on philology, Arabic poetry and history. The bulk of the material dates to late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Shamela’s website
3. Shamelais one of the largest free digital collections of Arabic books online, with over 6,000 volumes. Most work deal with Islamic religious sciences, but include other topics as well, such as travelogues, chronicles and biographical dictionaries. Users can search Shamela library by keyword or browse according to the following genres: al-ʿAqida, al-Tafasir, al-Farq wa-al-Rudud, ʿUlum al-Qurʾan, Tajwid wa-al-Qiraʾat, Mutun al-Hadith, al-Ajzaʾ al-Haditha, Makhtutat Haditha, Shuruh al-Hadith, Kutub al-Takhrij wa-al-Zawaʾid, Kutub al-Albani, al-ʿIlal wa-al-Suʾalat, ʿUlum al-Hadith, Usul al-Fiqh, Tarikh, al-Fatawa, al-Sira, al-Tarajim, al-Ansab, al-Daʿwa, and many others. This is an incredible resource for anyone studying pre-modern Middle Eastern history or modern Islamic thought. Unfortunately, since Shamela reformatted some of the material, page numbers are often inconsistent with their printed counterparts; readers must cross check the electronic files with the printed texts. Still a remarkable resource.
Waqfeyais quite similar to Shamela, although it is smaller and the user interface is not quite as sleek. It also focuses on Islamic religious sciences, but also includes many volumes on other topics, including Islamic economics; history; the Muslim family; contemporary life; and Arabic language and literature.
Al Aqsa Mosque library: This digitization project preserves the historical periodical collections (1900-1950) at the Al-Aqsa Mosque Library, located in East Jerusalem. There are some rare periodicals in this collection, such as Majallat Rawdat al-Maʿarif (1922-34), the journal of one of the most important high schools in Mandate Palestine, al-Kulliyya al-ʿArabiyya (1928-36), the journal of the most important men’s education training college in Mandate Palestine, al-Huquq (1925-7), the only Arabic law journal to publish in Mandate Palestine, as well as a dozen others: al-ʿArab (1933-4), al-Jinan (1874); al-Mahabbah (1901), al-Hasna (1909); al-Zahra (1922-6), al-Fajr (1935), al-Jamiʿa al-Islamiyya (1932-5), al-Jamiʿa al-ʿArabiyya (1928-35), al-Sirat al-Mustaqim (1931-6), Sawt al-Shaʿb (1929-34); al-Awqat al-ʿArabiyya (1935); al-Liwaʾ (1936-7); Tasvir-i Efkar (1909); al-Muqtabas (1909-16); al-Qabas (1913-34); al-Difaʿ (1934-51); Filastin (1923-48); al-Aqdam (1934-6) and Mirʾat al-Sharq (1922-36). This is the single best digitized collection of historical Arabic periodicals on the web. A great many dissertations could be written about the political, religious and educational history of late Ottoman and Mandatory Palestine based on this collection alone. Regrettably, the user interface was poorly designed. The material is not searchable by keyword, so trying to browse through large amounts of material can be frustrating at times. It is still an incredible collection (funded by the British Library).
Historical Jewish Press Website
Historical Jewish Press:This is the largest collection of Jewish and Hebrew periodicals in the world, digitized and searchable by keyword! The collection includes fifty-two titles in a half-dozen languages, including Hebrew (28), French (8), Yiddish (6), English (5), Judeo-Spanish (2), Judeo-Arabic (2), Russian (1) and Hungarian (1) published in Europe, the Middle East and the United States from the 1850s to the 1990s, with a concentration of material from 1900-1950. I recall very vividly doing a simple search for the word “locust” (in the relevant languages) and digging up countless anecdotes buried in newspapers I had not even heard of about the 1915 locust attack in Syria and Palestine. But make sure you use the old version. The new one still has some bugs. (update and ed. note [18 Jun 2015]: According to other researchers, this website is not accessible from Turkey. Use a VPN to access it.)
Hebrew Books: This enormous collection includes some 52,449 Hebrew books. Most of the material will be of interest primarily to students of Jewish philosophy, theology, prayer, the Talmud, halakha and other matters pertaining to Jewish ritual worship and practice, but there is much to be gained for anyone studying American and Jewish history or the history of Israel/Palestine. Most of the collection dates from the nineteenth century onwards and can be searched by keyword or browsed by genre: American, Avos, Chabad, Chassidus, common, Hagada, periodicals, rishonim, shulchan aruch, biography and more.
Qatar Digital Library: The sleek design and powerful user interface feels more like a tech-start up than a digital archive, but then again, this project was funded by Qatar. The site has digitized 303,094 documents, most of which seem to come from the British India Office that deal with the Gulf, especially Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Iraq, Iran and the UAE. The documents span the period 1700-1999, with the overwhelming majority of the documents covering the period, 1850-1950. The database is searchable by subject (e.g. foreign relations, Arab nationalism), place (Bushehr, Muscat, Persian Gulf), type (archival file) or people and organizations (Colonial Office, Sir Gilbert Clayton). Incredibly, for each document, users can view a transcript of the document (machine generated), a summary (human generated) as well as a bit of information on the physical characteristics of the document. The site also provides some simple html5 to users who want to embed the image viewer of certain documents into their websites, as well as a selection of “articles from our experts,” all of which seem to have been written by Arabists and other librarians at the British Library (funded by Qatar).
Women’s Worlds in Qajar Iran: The focus of the collection is, wait for it, Women in Qajar Iran (1796-1925), but there is much to be gained here for specialists of other topics and periods, such as a sixth century Persian medical textbooks and letters from the 1930s-1950s. The collection can be browsed either by genre of the source itself (i.e. manuscripts, objects, legal and financial records, photographs, letters and audio files), people, places or subjects. Most of the material is in Persian, save for an occasional Arabic text. Contributors digitized an extremely rich collection of physical materials, from water pipes to lingerie, innocuously labeled “undergarment pants.” There is an inordinate amount of really personal stuff, such as juicy marriage contracts. The design is sleek, until you reach the page to view the actual records. There is one saving grace: click the “print” button, then select “convert entire document,” and type your email. A PDF will be sent to your inbox. Note that some of the contributors to the collection still maintain their ownership rights, so be sure to prnt scrn if you are using any of the personal stuff. (Read HAZINE’s piece on the Women’s World in Qajar Iran.)
Open Access TBMM: This collection of 1,230 volume is a gold mine for researchers of the late Ottoman and Republican periods of Turkish history. It includes hundreds of Ottoman language works that
TBMM Website
cover contemporary affairs, history, ethics and government publications, such as a 1914 book about the health bureau in the Hijaz, early editions of Katib Çelebi’s Taqvim-i Tevarih, an authorless 1861 history of Afghanistan and Şevki ʿAziz’s 1877 Mirrors of Ottoman history, a 1916 military report about Iran and hundreds of other rare works. There is also rich collection of high quality maps of various parts of the Ottoman and Turkish towns from both the Ottoman and Republican periods, such as Edremit, Kütahya, Sivas, Erzurum, Simav, Rize, Ünye, Maltya, Van, Kilis, Sis, Çorum, Ankara, Urfa, Amasya and dozens of other places. The materials in this collection published from the 1930s and beyond consist almost exclusively of Turkish political party programs. The collection is searchable by author, subject or publication date. There are also dozens if not hundreds (most of the books seem to have been in the possession of the library of the The Grand National Assembly in Turkey, the TBMM). This is an incredible collection, not known to Worldcat.
Archive.org: It seems almost too obvious to list, but researchers do not regularly search archive.org as they would worldcat. Archive.org is better known for archiving the internet, but its contributors have scanned a great deal of material that worldcat does not seem to know about and have gathered an impressive array of material scattered across the web. An example is the French language periodical about the Orient, Revue de l’Orient Chrétien (1896 à 1936), which had previously existed elsewhere on the web but was brought over to archive.org. The user-interface is friendly. Archive is the best place on the internet to find keyword searchable texts out of copyright.
Cite this: Zachary J. Foster, “11 Essential Digitized Collections for Middle East Historians,” HAZINE, 17 June 2015, https://hazine.info/11-essential/
Zachary J. Foster is a Ph.D candidate in the Near Eastern Studies Department at Princeton University, focusing on the history of the idea of the Palestine.
Set in the heart of Manchester, between the City Council, the Magistrates’ Court, and the Coroner’s Court, The John Rylands Library (hereafter JRL) houses the Special Collections of The University of Manchester Library. It is one of the three largest academic libraries in the United Kingdom, and houses more than 400,000 printed books and over a million manuscripts and documents, including important collections of Oriental manuscripts. In this article, I will focus on the JRL collections related to Near Eastern studies.
Exterior of the old entrance to the library.
History
The JRL is named after John Rylands (1801-1888), a famous British entrepreneur who owned the most important textile manufacturing concern in Victorian England. It was created by the wife of the latter, Enriqueta Rylands (d. 1908), shortly after his death. Architect Basil Champneys (d. 1935) was asked to construct the building, which opened to the public on January 1, 1900. The JRL was enriched by Mrs. Rylands’ important purchases of books and manuscripts, especially by the acquisition of two major collections: the Spencer Collection in 1892 and the Crawford Collection in 1901. The majority of the Oriental manuscripts at the JRL come from the latter. In 1921, Henry Guppy, the JRL Librarian from 1900 to 1948, invited local families to deposit at the library their archives for safekeeping, so that the library soon became one of the first institutions to collect and preserve historical family records. In July 1972, a merger between the JRL and the University of Manchester Library took place. Since then, the JRL collections are part of The University of Manchester Library Special Collections. In the early 1980s, the Arabic, Persian and Turkish manuscripts of the Chethams Library were acquired by the University of Manchester Library and added to the collections of the JRL.
Collections
The core holdings of the JRL are the Spencer Collection, comprising 43,000 printed books, of which 4,000 were printed before 1501; and the Crawford Collection, comprising 6,000 manuscripts written in fifty different languages. The majority of the Near Eastern manuscripts are found in the Crawford Collection.
A. Near Eastern manuscripts collections (in alphabetical order)
NB : A guide to the collections is available on the JRL Jewish, Near Eastern and Oriental studies webpage, including bibliographies of their respective catalogs. With a few exceptions, the catalogs mentioned here are all viewable and downloadable from the University of Manchester eScholar website. I also recommend F. Taylor’s manual and catalog of catalogs, which dates back to the 1970s, but is still very helpful: F. Taylor, “The Oriental Manuscript Collections in the John Rylands Library”, in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, vol. 54, n°2 (Spring 1972), p. 1-30 [EScholarID:1m2987]. See also C. H. Bleaney & G. J. Roper, “United Kingdom (1990)”, in G. Roper (ed.), World Survey of Islamic Manuscripts, vol. 3, Al-Furqān Islamic Heritage Foundation, London, 1994, p. 509-512
1. Arabic
900 Arabic manuscripts are found at the JRL and cover roughly 1,000 years. They include numerous Qur’ans (among which is a rare Mamluk Qur’an from the fifteenth century) and cover a wide range of subjects such as history, law, science, medicine, philosophy, geography, cosmography, astronomy, astrology, literature, etc. The JRL also holds a collection of 800 papyri derived from the Crawford Collection and consisting of private letters, tradesmen’s and household accounts, among other records. Most of the dated papyri date to the third/ninth century. The collection also contains 1,500 uncataloged paper fragments in Arabic deriving in most cases from the Genizah Collection. The Genizah Collection is a collection of around 14,000 fragments written in Hebrew, Aramaic and Judeo-Arabic from the Genizah of the Synagogue of Ben Ezra in Fustat, Cairo between the tenth and nineteenth centuries of the Common Era. It was discovered by Solomon Schechter, among others, and acquired when the JRL purchased the collection of Moses Gaster in 1954. The major part of the Genizah Collection was catalogued and is available in digital form via LUNA.
Catalogs:
E. Bosworth, “A Catalogue of Accessions to the Arabic Manuscripts in the John Rylands University Library of Manchester”, in Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, vol. 56, n° 1-2 (1973-1974), p. 34-73 (1973), 256-296 (1974) [EScholarID: (p. 34-73); (p. 256-296)].
S. Margoliouth, Catalogue of Arabic Papyri in the John Rylands Library Manchester, The Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1933 [EScholarID: (p. 1-49); (p. 50-143); (p. 144-241); (plates 1-42)].
Mingana, Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library Manchester, The Manchester University Press, Manchester, 1934 [EScholarID: (MSS 1-207); (MSS 208-433); (MSS 434-818)].
This catalog with its index and detailed descriptions is practical and useful, although it sometimes makes attribution mistakes [for instance, Mingana wrongly identifies the author of the two texts in the Arabic MS 374 [349] (Ibn Rushd’s Talkhis Kitab al-Qiyas and Talkhis Kitab al-Burhan) as being al-Farabi. Likewise, he mistakenly considers al-Farabi to be the author of the text in the Arabic MS 375 [403] (Ibn Sina’s Kitab al-Najat on Physics)]. The manuscripts are classified according to catalog numbers followed by their shelfmarks between brackets. In the case of a compendium (majmu‘a), the texts of the latter are not scattered throughout the catalog but remain together in the same description. To avoid any confusion, readers should requests manuscripts by quoting their full numbers, including both catalog numbers and shelfmarks between brackets.
al-Moraekhi & G. Rex, “The Arabic Papyri of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester”, in Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, vol. 78, n° 2 (1996), p. 1-232 [EScholarID: (introduction); (Part I); (Part II); (Indices); (References)].
See also LUNA for the online catalog of the Genizah Collection
2. Armenian
22 Armenian manuscripts, on parchment or paper, are found in the JRL. They consist mainly of religious texts. Among them is a Gospel codex, which would be the oldest Armenian manuscript in British Libraries. There is also an abundantly illustrated sixteenth-century Romance of Alexander.
Catalogs:
Kiwrtean, “A Short Catalogue of the Armenian Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library Manchester”, in Sion, vol. 49 (1975), p. 199-259.
Nersessian, A Catalogue of the Armenian Manuscripts in the British Library Acquired Since the Year 1913 and of Collections in Other Libraries in the United Kingdom, British Library, London, 2012
3. Hebrew
The JRL comprises a collection of about 400 Hebrew manuscripts, Torah scrolls and marriage contracts dating between the fourteenth and nineteenth centuries of the Common Era. It includes prayer books, commentaries, treatises on various subjects, letters, marriage contracts, liturgical poetry (piyyutim), and thirteen scrolls of the Law. There are, in addition, around 10,600 fragments (generally very small) in Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic coming from the Genizah Collection (see A.1). One can find there various autograph fragments of Maimonides, including one folio from the Guide of the Perplexed. The JRL holds also a collection of 377 Samaritan manuscripts derived mostly from the Gaster Collection; see A.1)
Catalogs:
Samely, “The Interpreted Text: Among the Hebrew Manuscripts of the John Rylands University Library”, in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, vol. 73, n° 2 (1991), p. 1-20 [EScholarID:1m2267].
See also LUNA for the online catalog of the Genizah Collection.
NB: A catalog of the Hebrew manuscripts is in course of preparation.
4. Persian
The JRL Persian manuscripts collection comprises over 1,000 volumes dating from the thirteenth to nineteenth centuries CE, including many illuminated codices. They cover subjects such as theology, Quranic exegesis (tafsīr), Sufism, lives of holy men and prophets, poetry, romances, chronicles and fables, calligraphy, lexicography, grammar, philosophy, medicine, natural history, geography, cosmography, occult sciences, astronomy and astrology. They include encyclopedias and volumes on the history of India and the Mughal Empire.
Catalogs:
Kerney, Bibliotheca Lindesiana: Hand-List of Oriental Manuscripts, privately printed, 1898, p. 107-237.
Kerney, Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts belonging to the Earl of Crawford, not published, n. d. (1890?). Can be consulted at the Library. (This catalog can be consulted at the Library and online.
W. Robinson, “Some Illustrated Persian Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library”, in Bulletin of the John Rylands Library, vol. 34, n° 1 (1952), p. 69-80 [EScholarID:1m2002].
5. Syriac and Karshuni
The JRL holds 70 manuscripts and fragments in Syriac and Karshuni (among which there are three manuscripts in Turkish Karshuni and one manuscript in Armenian Karshuni). The Syriac manuscripts consist of copies of the Old and New Testaments, psalters, liturgical texts and prayers, hymns, books of catechism, lives of Saints, theological treatises, a Syriac-Arabic lexicon, a treatise on amulets, several treatises of Bar Hebraeus (among which a book containing the first nine books of The Cream of the Sciences on logic), a corpus of writings of Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite and theRhetoric of Anthony of Tagrit.
Catalogs:
Coakley, “A Catalogue of the Syriac Manuscripts in the John Rylands Library”, in Bulletin of the John Rylands University Library of Manchester, vol. 75, n° 2 (1993), p. 105–208.
6. Turkish
The JRL Turkish manuscripts collection consists of 195 items, dating from the fifteenth century to the nineteenth century. Most manuscripts are in Ottoman Turkish, but twelve of them are written in Çağatay and one is a Latin transcription of a compilation of Turkish and Armenian texts. J. Schmidt published a catalog of the entire collection in 2011, which details the wide range of subjects that it contains, including anthologies of poetry, narrative poetry, guides for dervish novices, fables and stories, commentaries, grammar books, letters (among which, a number of Ottoman official documents), biographies and biographical dictionaries, dictionaries and vocabulary lexicons, travelogues, library catalogs, texts on religious ethics, jurisprudence (fiqh), history, medicine, geography, cosmography, astronomy, mathematics, and music.
Catalogs:
Kerney, Bibliotheca Lindesiana: Hand-List of Oriental Manuscripts, privately printed, 1898, p. 241-268.
Kerney, Catalogue of Turkish Manuscripts belonging the Earl of Crawford, not published, 1892. Can be consulted at the Library.
Schmidt, A Catalogue of the Turkish Manuscripts in the John Rylands University Library at Manchester, Brill, Leiden-Boston, coll. “Islamic Manuscripts and Books”, vol. 2, 2011.
7. Other Languages
The JRL also holds collections of around 1,100 Sumerian and Akkadian clay tablets dating from the third and second centuries BCE, over a thousand Coptic items, and smaller collections of Armenian and Ethiopian manuscripts, as well as Egyptian papyri.
The library holds a collection of more than one hundred manuscripts from Southeast Asia, partially catalogued, in ten different languages.
B. Archival Collections
The JRL hosts various archives of notable documents related to the history of the Middle East. The most important one is without any doubt the Archive of the Guardian (formerly Manchester Guardian), which was established in 1821 by John Edward Taylor (1791-1844). The editorial correspondence and dispatches from its reporters constitute a rich source of information on the history of the Middle East in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The collection contains important material on, for instance, the founding of Israel, the later Middle Eastern conflicts, as well as the Suez Crisis. The Papers of Samuel Alexander (1877-1938) are also of importance since they include, for example, a correspondence between the latter and the Zionist pioneer Chaim Weizmann (1874-1952), the first President of Israel. See also the Military Papers of Major General Eric Edward Dorman O’Gowan (1926-1969) and Field Marshal Auchinleck (1919-1971), who was commander-in-chief of the British forces in the Middle East (1941-1942) and India (1943-1947). A downloadable digitized catalog of the Guardian Archive is available on the JRL website. Other catalogs can be searched online via ELGAR, such as the Catalogue of the Manchester Egyptian and Oriental Society Archives.
A view of the historic reading room.
Research Experience
People conducting research in the Special Collections work in the Elsevier Reading Room (4th floor), as the Historic Reading Room (3rd floor) is used for readers’ own private work. In addition to the main staircase, an elevator serves every floor of the Library building. I had the opportunity to work for several days in the Elsevier Reading Room, and I can say that the conditions there are very comfortable. The Library’s staff is conscientious and very reliable. The controlled climate and secure environment provide a quiet atmosphere. No matter how dark the sky, the light is always sufficient. In daytime, the room is enriched by a soft light coming from a generous bay window that overlooks Spinningfield and Deansgate. The work tables can accommodate up to twenty-two people and are equipped with two electrical sockets each. Many other facilities are provided: adaptors for laptops, a set of magnifying glasses, an easy-to-use fiber-optic light sheet to analyze watermarks, a ruler and a microscope are at the readers’ disposal. A stock of pencils is provided as well as pencil sharpeners and several erasers. Manuscripts and books must be used on book-rests. It is asked that the reader give advanced notice of at least 24 hours to guarantee every item he of she asks for is ready. There is no limit to the amount of requested items. Several items can be consulted at the same time if the reader provides valid reasons for doing so. In the Elsevier Reading Room, the presence of three computers connected to the Internet will prove useful for searching the webpage of the JRL and The University of Manchester, but not for other use. Basically, only members and students of The University of Manchester are allowed to do so on their own computers, as well as people who have registered at Eduroam. The Library is planning to provide Wi-Fi access to external users in the future.
Accessibility
The JRL is situated on Deansgate, Manchester. In order to access the collections, it is important that the reader first make an appointment by e-mail (see Contact Information) or by phone. On that occasion, he or she can also pre-order one or several manuscript(s) or document(s) using the appropriate lists, inventories and catalogs of the JRL. On the day of his or her arrival, he or she must present a proof of address, a photo-ID (including signature), as well as a letter of reference. Note that original documents are required, not photocopies.
After entering the Library, the reception staff helps new readers to find their way in the library. Before going to the reading room, readers are asked to deposit their coats, bags, umbrellas, sleeves, pens and laptop computer carry-cases in the lockers in the basement (for which a £1 coin returnable deposit is necessary). Clear plastic bags are at their disposal to carry their work material and belongings with them (more information is available on the webpage “Using the reading rooms in the John Rylands Library”; see Resources and Links). The reader is then invited to go to the Readers Reception on the 4th floor to fill a registration application, in which he or she is asked to describe briefly the purpose of his or her visit and the topic of research. If the reader plans to come back the day after or during the days following his or her last visit, it is recommended to specify whether consulted materials should be reserved for future use. Without explicit notice from the reader, the documents will be returned to secure storage and it may take several hours to have them back again.
Reader Service Opening Hours
The Reader Service is open Monday through Saturday, from 10:00 to 17:00 (until 19:00 on Thursday). It is closed on Sunday and public holidays. The Library is closed over Christmas and New Year (check the library’s website for up-to-date information).
Reproductions
The University of Manchester Centre for Heritage Imaging and Collection Care (CHICC) can provide digital images of most items in the JRL for research and publication, subject to the physical condition of the item. Images are available in several formats: JPEG (72 dpi, c.1mb), small TIFF (300 dpi, 5-10mb) and large TIFF (600dpi, 60-80mb). The JPEG format is for research purposes only and the most suitable for researchers. It is also possible to obtain photographic and paper prints. All orders are subject to a £10 administration fee and VAT (where applicable). JPEG reproductions (per page, not per folio) cost £3 each up to 10 photographic exposures. If more than 10, the price is £100 (1-50 images), £200 (1-100 images) and £300 (1-200 images). Above 200 images, the price is £100 per 100 images. Authorization from the JRL is needed if the requested images are to be used in a publication. To place an order, complete the Imaging Service Application Form and return it to the CHICC Imaging Service office. The CHICC Imaging Service prices and the Imaging Service Application Form are displayed on the “Order an image” webpage, as well as other useful pieces of information (see Resources and Links). Reproduction orders can be made remotely. Payment is requested in advance of an order being processed.
NB: Highlights from the collections kept at the JRL, including Rylands Collection, Rylands Genizah Collection and Rylands Papyri Collection, are freely available at the University of Manchester Image Collection website. For instance, the manuscript Arabic MS 378 [372], which contains Ibn Sina’s Kitāb al-Shifā’, is entirely available there in digitized high-definition form.
A view of the new entrance to the library.
Self-Service Photography
Self-service free of charge photography is allowed in the Elsevier Reading Room for private research purposes only. For each document, one should fill out an application and hand it over to a member of the staff at the desk. Pay close attention to the list of rules listed on the reverse of the form. Many items in the JRL are covered by Copyright Law, which includes unpublished manuscripts.
Transportation, Food and Other Facilities
Reaching the JRL is quite easy. When in Manchester city center, simply use the free Metroshuttle lines 1 or 2 and get off at the Deansgate (John Rylands Library) stop. You will find the Library in front of you, on the other side of the street. You can download a map of the Metroshuttle lines in PDF format on the following webpage: http://www.tfgm.com/buses/Pages/metroshuttle.aspx.
Breakfast and lunch are served daily at Café Rylands inside the JRL building for a reasonable price. It is opened every day of the week (Monday to Friday from 8:30 to 16:30; Saturday from 9:00 am to 16:30; Sunday from 11:00 to 16:30). There are many other restaurants and cafés in the vicinity of the library as well.
There is a book and souvenir shop inside the main entrance of the JRL building.
Contact Information
The John Rylands Library,
150 Deansgate,
Manchester,
M3 3EH
I would like to thank Elizabeth Gow, Manuscript Curator and Archivist, for the detailed information she offered me on the JRL as I wrote this article.
Teymour Morel is a PhD candidate at the University of Geneva and EPHE, Paris, and a full time collaborator to the European Research Council project “PhiC” (Philosophy in Context: Arabic and Syriac Manuscripts in the Mediterranean), directed by Maroun Aouad (Research Director at CNRS, Paris – Centre Jean Pépin – UPR 76).
The Historical Archive of Macedonia (Ιστορικό Αρχείο Μακεδονίας hereafter IAM) is located in Thessaloniki, Greece, and comprises a rich, albeit to a large degree unexplored, Ottoman archive. A curious researcher will find there, among other things, the main repository of archives produced by the Ottoman administration and belonging to the region of the Selanik sub-province (Selanik sancağı).[1] It is astonishing how few scholars have dealt with the archive of an Ottoman city as important as Selanik, especially considering the quantity of its holdings (comprising more than 4,000 bound Ottoman registers and an important number of loose documents) and the range of time it covers (1690-1912).
Ottoman map of the Province of Selanik.
History
The IAM was established in Thessaloniki in 1954. It is one of the forty-eight regional State Archives and operates as an independent branch under the authority of the Greek Ministry of Education and Religious Affairs. Following the archive’s official establishment, the Public Prosecutor’s Office of the Appeal Court of Thessaloniki, which had kept the city’s Ottoman archives since 1953, transferred the collection to the IAM, as a result of the coordinated efforts of its director, Prof. Vassilios Dimitriadis. Between 1912—when the city of Selanik was incorporated into the Greek Kingdom—and 1953, the Ottoman archives were located in the translation office of Thessaloniki and operated under the authority of the city’s Court of First Instance. This translation office maintained the city’s Ottoman records and provided translation services of official documents (mostly title deeds) to private citizens. By 1956, the IAM added the archives of other translation offices in nearby towns, such as Katerini, Poligiros, Kilkis, Edessa (see below for the Ottoman names of these places).
After occupying various central buildings of the city, the IAM moved to its present building in 1994. The Russian community of Thessaloniki built the archive’s current building, known as the Russian hospital, in the first decade of the twentieth century with funding from the Russian government. After the October Revolution and the dissolution of the Russian community of Thessaloniki, the building was taken by the Greek state, which used it as a maternity hospital until the mid-1970s, when it was abandoned.
Collections
The IAM contains mainly an archive and a reference library. All research and reading take place in the library room.
Archive: While the majority of the archival material consists of Ottoman documents, the IAM also contains archives produced by the administration of the Greek state after 1912. This collection comprises administrative and judicial material (e.g. decisions of the town’s Court of First Instance, documentation of famous court cases like Gr. Lambrakis or G. Polk), ecclesiastical archives, notarial documents, archives of private Greek schools (e.g. Valagianni School), public schools (e.g. Girls’ School) or large factories/enterprises (e.g. Fix, Allatini), etc.
The Ottoman archival collection includes 4,000 bound registers and several loose documents produced over more than two centuries, which concern the sancak of Selanik. As the archive contains records for the entire sancak of Selanik, the collection includes significant material for nearby cities, such as Poligiros in today’s Chalkidiki (Poliroz), Katerini (Katrin), Kilkis (Avrethisar), Edessa (Vodinα), and Veria (Karaferye). These archives can be separated into the following categories:
Sicill archives (ιεροδικαστικά αρχεία):[2] This collection comprises 373 bound registers, which range from 1694 to 1912, and covers the longest period of all other documents in this archive. The vast majority of these registers belong to the kadı court of Selanik (337 registers, 1694-1912), while the rest belongs to the kadı courts of the districts of Katrin (3 registers, 1888-1912), Avrethisar (22 registers, 1814-1912) and Ksendire (today’s Kassandra in Chalkidiki) (11 registers, 1870-1912). Although the registers start in 1694, they also include copies of documents from earlier times. The registers range in size from 20 to 400 pages each and include not only judicial rulings, but also documentation associated with imperial decrees and administrative or military correspondence. The sicill archives of Selanik are available both in microfilm and in digital format, although they are not yet available online (for digitized archives available also online see below. It is not certain yet, when the digitized sicill archives of Selanik will be put online). The sicills originating from Katrin, Avrethisar and Ksendire are available only in their original form. An exception here is the sicill archive of the town of Karaferye (Veria, 1602-1882), which is available in microfilm and digitally, as well as online under the heading Αρχεία Ν. Ημαθίας (Archives of the Prefecture of Imathia).
Court Archives (nizamiyye mahkemeleri, τακτικά δικαστήρια): These records comprise 762 bound registers and 233 files dated between 1868 and 1912. They document the judicial system as it was set up following the Tanzimat reforms and the establishment of the nizamiyye mahkemeleri with the production of new penal codes and the new Civil Code, the Mecelle. In particular, they are comprised of the archives of the Court of First Instance of Selanik (Πρωτοδικείο Θεσσαλονίκης, 1877-1912), the Trade Court of Selanik (Εμποροδικείο Θεσσαλονίκης, 1868-1912), the Courts of First Instance of Avrethisar (1884-1912), Vodina (1885-1912), Karacova (1906-1912), Katrin (1887-1912), Ksendire (1882-1912) and Karaferye (not fully cataloged yet). They are available only in their original form. Hardly any research has been conducted in this section.
Land Registers (κτηματολογικά αρχεία): This collection constitutes the most voluminous one, with 1,821 bound registers and 25 files, ranging from 1830 to 1912. Many of these registers (725) belong to the central cadastre of Selanik (1858-1912), although the collection also contains the land registers of the districts of the Selanik province (1844-1912), the land registers of the religious endowments (the vakıf registers) (1830-1912), the land register of the vakıf of Gazi Evrenos (1845-1912), the register office of Ksendire (1872-1912), Katrin (1865-1912), Avrethisar (1872-1912), Vodena (1872-1912), the land registers of Karaferye (1872-1908) and the registers of the translation office of Thessaloniki (1909, 1912-1953), Veroia (1915-1953) and Chalkidiki. The central cadastre of Selanik is digitized and available online (for the years 1871-1908), while the vakıf register and the land register of the vakıf of Gazi Evrenos are fully digitized, but only accessible at the archive. All the other documents in this collection are only available in their original format.
Tax registers: These records consist of 1,255 bound registers produced between 1872 and 1907 for Selanik (1872-1907), Karacova (1876), Vodina (1876), Avrethisar, Katrin (1873-1875), Ksendire (1873-1875) and Karaferye (1905-1912). Only the tax register of Selanik is digitized and available online. The rest may be consulted at the archive.
The land and tax registers are the most frequently consulted collections in the archive, especially for the years after 1860. Most of the interest in these materials stems from private persons in search of title deeds or genealogical information; these deeds are mainly used for litigation purposes between individuals or between individuals and the state.
Administrative registers: These registers consist of 152 bound registers and 27 files covering the period from 1875 to 1912 and include the archive of the administrative council of the province of Selanik (Selanikvilayeti) between 1875 and 1912; the archive of the administrative councils of the districts of Avrethisar (1908-1912); Karacova (1907-1912), and Katrin (1897-1912); the archive of the central forest authority of Selanik (1893-1912) and the regional forest authorities of the Selanik vilayeti (1896-1912). While three volumes of the Selanik vilayeti archive have been digitized, most records in this section are available only in their original format.
The digitized sections that are available online can be found here.
The Reference Library: The library contains about 3,000 volumes. The books have to be read in the library or can be photocopied outside the archive. They deal mainly with the history of Thessaloniki and its surroundings, although the library has also a nice collection of Karamanlidika (Turkish in Greek script) books. In addition, one can also find Greek-Turkish dictionaries, as well as academic journals and collections like Turcica, Archivum Ottomanicum, Islamic Law & Society, and The Cambridge History of Islam.
Researchers at work in the archive’s library.
Research Experience
Research in this archive is quite easy-going and does not require any special procedure. The archive’s personnel speak English and French.
Almost all of the material in the archives is publicly accessible (except sensitive personal data such as adoption files or the ones which are labeled as confidential) and generally no special procedure of admission is required. Researchers are asked to fill in an application form, merely for statistical reasons, and can then immediately proceed to their research. However, researchers wishing to study large parts of the archival collection or coming for a lengthy period of time to study a specific collection are strongly recommended to communicate with IAM well beforehand in order for the required material to be prepared. These researchers are also requested to proffer some form of certification (e.g. recommendation letter of supervisor, etc.). The archive requires researchers to obtain permission from the curator of the General State Archives when requesting reproductions of a significant portion of the archives or the digital reproduction of an entire collection.
Material can be requested at any time of the day (9:00-15:00), and, in most cases, it is delivered shortly thereafter. If a researcher wishes to see more than one or two registers per day, he or she is requested to inform the librarians a day beforehand. There are two computers in the library room, at which digitized material can be viewed. In cases in which the digitized copy is not clear, the archive will also provide the originals. If the requested material has not been digitized, the archive will make available the original document for the researcher.
Unfortunately, the library room is rather small, with less than ten seating places, and can also be a bit noisy sometimes while librarians are coming and going. There is no wireless internet access. While the space does not create ideal research conditions, the close contact and exchange with personnel and other researchers partly compensates for this shortcoming, as is often the case in smaller, local archives.
Cataloging is rather short and descriptive, and only in Greek. The catalogs are not published volumes, but rather sheets of paper kept together in dossiers. There exists a general catalog (available also from the website of the archive; works only with Firefox and IE), as well as a catalog of the vakıf register, and of the sicill archives of Selanik, Avrethisar and Karaferye. The registers are listed in chronological order and in some cases include information about the content. Despite the poor cataloging, the personnel is very helpful in finding the requested material.
Accessibility
The archives are open to researchers from Monday to Friday, between 9:00 and 15:00, except all official holidays of the Greek state. The archive is wheelchair accessible via a special entrance from a side-road, while a special lift facilitates access to the library room on the first floor.
Transportation and Food
The archives are located quite centrally, a walking distance of about 20 to 25 minutes from the city’s center. They can also be accessed by the bus lines 2, 10, 11, 58,, all of which pass various stops along the central Egnatia Street. Bus tickets can be obtained at small kiosks in every corner of the city, or inside the bus. The buses stop in front of the archive building, at the Eυκλείδη stop. Depending on the traffic, buses generally reach the archive stop in ten minutes.
There is no cafeteria inside the archives, although there are plenty of cafes and small restaurants located nearby.
Exterior view of the archive.
Reproduction Requests and Costs
Copies of archival material can be obtained in either paper or digital format. Researchers may also photograph material themselves. The costs are 0.50 euros per copy for an A4-page, 0.30 euros per digital copy, and 0.10 euros for each photograph taken by the researcher. There are no limits in the material one may ask to be copied, but if it is a “large quantity”, special permission may be needed. There even exists the possibility to request material from abroad with a CD of the digitized material sent by post to the researcher.
I thank Mrs. Giannoukakou for providing me with valuable information and material concerning the IAM. I have used the following material for writing this article:
-Αμαλία Παππά-Καραπιδάκη, Τα Οθωμανικά Αρχεία του Ιστορικού Αρχείου Μακεδονίας (The Ottoman Archives of the Historical Archive of Macedonia), σελ. 55-64 and Κίρκη Γεωργιάδου, Το Ευρετήριο των Ιεροδικαστικών Κωδίκων της Θεσσαλονίκης (The Index of the Registers of the Kadi Courts of Thessaloniki), σελ. 65-68 and Κωνσταντίνος Γιαντσής, Οθωμανικό Κτηματολόγιο (Ottoman Cadastre), σελ. 69-72, in Ν. Καραπιδάκης (επιμ.), Επετηρίδα των Γενικών Αρχείων του Κράτους – 1990, Αθήνα: Βιβλιοθήκη Γενικών Αρχείων του Κράτους, 1991.
-Υπουργείο Πολιτισμού, Υπουργείο Βόρειας Ελλάδας, Νεώτερα Μνημεία της Θεσσαλονίκης, Παλιό Ρωσσικό Νοσοκομείο – Πρώην Δημόσιο Μαιευτήριο, σελ. 172.
Anna Vakali is a graduate student at the University of Basel, where she studies crime and intercommunal relations in Ottoman Selanik and Manastır during the Tanzimat reforms.
2 April 2014
Cite this: Anna Vakali, “The Historical Archive of Macedonia in Thessaloniki”, HAZİNE, 2 April 2014, https://hazine.info/2014/04/02/archive-macedonia-thessaloniki/
[1] I will use the Ottoman term Selanik when referring to the city of Thessaloniki during Ottoman rule.
[2]I have included the Greek names as well, because the catalogs are available only in Greek language.
(Editors’ Note: This is the first of a series of essays that explore different methods and techniques for conducting research and that delve deeper into the histories and ethics of the archives themselves.)
How Digitization has Transformed Manuscript Research: New Methods for Early Modern Islamic Intellectual History
Scholars often treat manuscript libraries only as repositories of unpublished primary sources. We show up at a library, request a manuscript or two, and leave shortly thereafter with a digital or paper copy in hand or we sit at a desk for hours each day, transcribing a manuscript word by word. In most traditional manuscript libraries, this method made sense. Librarians might only pull manuscripts once a day, or even once a week, bringing only a couple of manuscripts at a time. In such conditions, the most efficient course of action is to peruse a library’s catalog, request a few key manuscripts, and read them closely.
Today, however, the mass digitization of manuscripts is blurring the long held boundaries between manuscript libraries and archives and altering the act of research in the process. Scholars often view the changes that digitization entails in a negative light as the physical document is increasingly removed from the hands of the researcher. Here, though, I would like to take a different approach and explore the true possibilities provided by digitization as scholars are able to ask new questions, discover unknown texts, and gain a different understanding of intellectual life in the early modern Islamic world in particular. My belief is that a fundamental shift has occurred now that researchers can view twenty, fifty, or even one hundred manuscripts a day rather than two to three. In what follows, I examine some of the techniques we can use and the insights we can gain when given the opportunity to look at thousands of manuscripts during a research period. Others, of course, have written about the new possibilities for historical scholarship offered by the digitization of archival material, often focusing on the chance for group projects by geographically dispersed researchers. Research with digital manuscripts, though, is still largely an individual affair that requires spending many a long hour laboring away in a dimly lit library, one’s face illuminated only by the glow of a computer monitor. The conclusions below might seem obvious to those researchers already at work in digitized manuscript libraries, but I think it is worth discussing openly the impact of these technologies on the way we research. I hope that my remarks will not only open a discussion among researchers but also inform librarians and archivists as they continue to digitize their collections.
Bookcase by Manolo Valdes
Medieval Precedents and Early Modern Challenges
Our current model of manuscript research is largely the result of the preoccupation of earlier generations of scholars with the medieval Islamic period (c. 800-1200). Until recently, scholars saw this period as an ideal golden age, a time when Islamic thought reached its intellectual climax in all fields. The number of surviving manuscripts was relatively small and those texts that had survived are often only found in renditions from the early modern period (1400-1800). For scholars who studied the medieval period with a “golden-age” mindset, the exercise at hand was to take the few remaining copies of a medieval text and prepare a critical edition in order to rid the text of the corrupting accretions of the ensuing centuries. The desired result was an ur-text in the form of a printed book, reflecting the original intentions of the properly ascribed author that scholars could then use for further analysis. We bear the legacy of this model today whether we use the fruits of these scholars’ labor in research libraries or continue to create critical editions or catalogs ourselves.
When we attempt to study the relatively neglected early modern period (1400-1800) a new set of challenges emerges. The quantity of material overwhelms scholars. There is simply more: more authors, more manuscripts, more copyists, more readers, more marginal notes. Librarians estimate that two to three million Arabic-script manuscripts currently exist in the world, the vast majority copied in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries, today stowed away in public or private collections. On top of this, many of the authors and the titles are largely unknown to most scholars. Those texts and authors, like Evliya Çelebi or Mustafa Ali, that are traditionally well-known to scholars of the Ottoman Empire only comprise a tiny sliver of this vast corpus of materials. In reality, I would estimate, albeit unscientifically, that we only know of 10-15% of the works and authors of the early modern period, and even these we often know superficially. What little secondary literature that exists can likewise mislead us as to which treatises and authors were actually popular and widely read in the period. It is my personal belief that this relative surfeit of material is due to a gradual expansion of manuscript production and a transformation in reading practices although such claims are relatively under-researched.
Using a Library as an Archive
By changing the manuscript library into an archive, digitization provides us one set of tools to tackle this vast corpus of material and to explore this altered world of early modern readership. To explain what I mean by this phrase let me briefly generalize about the traditional manner of working in manuscript libraries (although I readily recognize that the line separating manuscript libraries and archives is rather artificial). In a traditional manuscript library, you are limited to requesting only a few volumes a day. Often you are allowed only to look at one volume at a time. Since it is tedious to request repeatedly the same manuscript, which might take a few days to arrive, you take careful notes on the manuscript before returning it. The process as a whole takes quite a bit of time and so you limit yourself to those manuscripts that are directly relevant to the research project, already listed in the catalog, rather than discovering the plethora of new material. A digitized library, on the other hand, allows one to view numerous manuscripts, each copy connected to another author or work, and therefore to jump from one to another within seconds. In this sense, the manuscript library becomes a sort of archive as researchers can quickly begin to dredge numerous unknown authors and works from the depths of the library in the same way that researchers working with documents can slowly piece them together to create a larger picture.
The key to such research is a good electronic catalog that keeps texts organized by their original volume. Most works written in the Islamic world before the twentieth century, save extremely long ones, were not individual volumes or codices. Instead, they were grouped together into miscellanies called mecmua (tr.)/majmu‘as (ar.). Even early printed works from the nineteenth century often follow this format. The main value of a mecmua is that it is a collection of texts, meaning that each text often has some sort of association with the other. Mecmuas are compiled through different means. Sometimes a scribe would copy them as a series. Other times they exist as one person’s personal notes, with additions by later readers. Alternatively, a later reader can take a number of unbound works and bind them into a single volume. On rare occasions, the collected texts were simply randomly assembled. These mecmuas can be the collected essays of one specific author or a collection on a theme, such as one particular legal question, or they can be a group of similarly minded texts and authors. By looking at mecmuas, even simply through a catalog that lists them together, you can start to understand which texts were read with one another, that is, you begin to discover the intertextuality of a scholarly world and thus enter the minds of early modern people. In this fashion, you can begin to break out of the straightjacket of well-known texts and discover those thousands of (relatively) unknown authors.
My personal method, which is only one of many possibilities, is to start my research with the names of a few authors or treatises. Even a few keywords will do. Let us use dreams as an example. You type “rüya” or “rü’ya” or “ruya” into the computer catalog and fifty or so results are returned. To gain more results, you type in “rü’y” or “rüy.” You start examining the search results, one by one, taking notes of authors and titles. You look at the works in mecmuas, paying attention to those other texts compiled alongside. Often the process brings up other texts on dreams that do not necessarily have the word “dream” in the title. This then gives you more titles and author names to search. You can then take each of these authors and search them by name. Some are minor characters with only a few other treatises, others are famous authors with hundreds of treatises, yet others are false attributions. You can then look at the other treatises by each author to see if they also deal with dreams and to get a sense of the other issues that were important to them. Slowly you develop a sense of what genres dealt with dreams and visions and the important personalities that are commonly cited. You find that there are dream interpretation manuals, treatises on the veracity of dreams, and a whole line of debate on visions of the Prophet Muhammad. You can gauge which are medieval copies of old treatises, new copies of medieval treatises, or relatively new works made in the early modern period.
Even works that are titled incorrectly or vaguely, like “a treatise on dreams,” can be valuable. The false attribution is helpful in and of itself as it is often the result of a mental connection made by a reader centuries ago, picked up by an unsuspecting cataloger. Vague titles that refer to a work generically or topically rather than by its actual name can often point to a more well-known treatise whose title never contained the word “dream.” Alternatively, it could be a piece that circulated anonymously and that readers or scribes attributed to various famous figures. After surveying the texts in this fashion, you can start to ascertain the correct titles and authors, often simply overlooked by catalogers, or by comparing the texts to other versions.
Once you find an author of interest, start by listing all of his works and every copy of each of his works. Then as you start to scan through them, look again at the mecmua in which each text is located and take note of recurrent treatises or those that pique your interest. When you look at the treatise, make sure to look at the colophon and note the copy date and the copyist as well as any marginal notes and the notes’ authors. If the author or a later reader has written a table of contents, see what they emphasize and how they organize the material. Then you look at the mecmua as a whole, attempting to see if it was copied by the same scribe or sewn together at a later date. (If the same scribe wrote a mecmua then you can use the neighboring works in the mecmua that possess copy dates to estimate the copy date of other treatises.) If the digital copy is of sufficient quality, examine the paper type, the binding, and the sewing to gauge the overall value of the book—whether it was an expensive or cheap volume. Look at ownership statements and library endowment stamps and compare them to the reference lists. Each offers a valuable piece of information. Then you can search the names of the copyist and owners, sometimes coming up with their own works or other copies. Each time you find an intriguing treatise or author, follow that lead to see what associations you can build up. With authors who possess relatively modest oeuvres, with perhaps five to fifteen in a library, you can complete this process fairly quickly. Authors with hundreds of copies of their works will need days of scrutiny.
In the process of all this surveying you not only gain a sense of a field of literature and its authors, you also come across a great deal of minor but important minutiae hidden away in the pages of the manuscripts. You encounter favorite poems, rants, announcements of births, descriptions of historical events, legal rulings, medicinal recipes, lists of books and more. You can use these seemingly trivial asides to find new figures or to contextualize a text, assuming you can pin this material to the correct period, as any later reader could have added these bits. Catalogers often skip the personal notes and thoughts of readers and copyists since they do not necessarily have a discrete author or title, though they are often some of the most valuable sections of manuscripts. You also find many cataloging mistakes, whole treatises skipped over in haste or simply ignored because they did not appear to be worthwhile and “complete” texts. Often the most obscurely or generically labeled treatise is the most interesting, something that a cataloger overlooked because it was too hard to properly identify and describe.
Digitization as Opportunity
In short, the method I outlined above starts with a few figures and slowly establishes a network of people, places, and titles. Each new discovery becomes a new node in this world of early modern thought that can lead us to even more authors and titles. In some sense, you are creating a personal catalog or map, but rather than organizing material by alphabetical author or generalized topic, this catalog connects the writers, readers, and books of a period. Once you achieve a grasp of a period as a whole, you can then focus on particular works and read them closely. The intention of such research is never to replace the close examination of a text but rather to chart the relatively unknown intellectual world of early modern Islamic societies so you can accurately choose the most relevant texts to read.
Of course, you can do such work with the physical manuscripts, but digitization makes it practical and efficient. When you can look at twenty, fifty, one hundred manuscripts in the same day, side by side, following whatever lead you might come across, research that might have taken five years can be done in a year. Moreover, a good digital catalog allows you to search across multiple manuscripts for pieces of titles or author names in a keystroke rather than flipping through the indices of multiple volumes.
There are downsides to the digitization of manuscripts. Scholars often lament, and rightfully so, the inability to interact tactilely with a physical copy, to sense its dimensions and quality with more than just a doubly distant pair of eyes. Employees digitizing the manuscripts often forget to photograph the bindings and covers. The best manuscript libraries allow researchers to access the originals if necessary, though many do not. Some libraries combine the worst of both worlds, forcing researchers to wait for days to read a few digital copies at a time as well as refusing them the privilege of viewing the actual manuscript. Finally, a library is only as good as its catalog. If catalogs, whether paper or electronic, do not accurately list basic information or do not display the mecmua as a whole, and instead treat every treatise as an independent work, then research becomes even more difficult and inefficient. Finally, the true benefits of working with digital manuscripts only become apparent when you have tens of thousands of manuscripts to browse. Only then can you easily track down all the different copies of a treatise and see, within a few seconds, what else the author may have written. For the moment, I am of the opinion that there is only one possible location for such research—Süleymaniye Library in Istanbul—although its catalog leaves much to be desired. The other major libraries, like Dar al-Kutub in Cairo, are a long way off from complete digitization.
Despite these frustrations, I still think that the digitization of manuscripts provides unique solutions to the problem of studying early modern intellectual history in particular. We can discover many of the poorly known authors and treatises of a period (that is, poorly known to us) in an efficient manner without having to rely on sheer chance. In this sense, it might have less to offer to those researchers studying medieval Islamic societies as the vast majority of mecmuas are from the early modern period. Perhaps most importantly of all, it allows us to address that most elusive question of readership and reception. Only when we can quickly go through twenty or thirty manuscripts in a few hours, looking at comments, ownership marks and more can you start making sense of the circulation and reception of these texts. We can pay attention to the short, sundry pamphlet-like literature that was so prevalent in the early modern period, rather than focus on one grand, though seldom-read text. Digitization allows us to access the expanded world of early modern readership. No longer chained to one ur-text, we can compare the many variants and changes of a text. By paying attention to this material world of manuscript reception, we might be able to find a new path between seeing these texts either purely as repositories of facts or as representations. In this sense, although digitization has distanced researchers from the material text itself, it has simultaneously refocused our attention on the manuscript as a medium worthy of study and respect.
(Many thanks to the friends and colleagues who commented on earlier draft. Readers’ comments and thoughts are welcome and encouraged.)
