Why are manuscripts critical to Islamic and Islamicate studies, and how do they impact pedagogy? How does material culture help us venture into the past, and how do manuscripts affect religious practice, be it Muslim, Coptic, Armenian, etc? Hazine is seeking 3-4 pieces on manuscripts and material culture from the Mashriq, Maghreb, East Africa, West Africa, Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Turkey, Iran, Greece, the Balkans, and the Mediterranean broadly that address, but are not limited to, the following topics:
MS Or 503, MS Or 504, MS Or 191, Ḥirz Chahārdeh Ma’ṣūmīn, undated, Persia, Twelver Talismanic scrolls worn as amulets, located at RBML Columbia University. (Photo credit: Shabbir Agha Abbas)
Miniatures, calligraphy, and other forms of Islamicate art
Talismans, amulets, and other items from the occult sciences
New findings that challenge established notions, such as variant readings
Technical aspects of handling and preserving manuscripts; innovations in the field of conservation and preservation
Efforts on decolonizing western manuscript collections, including archive reviews
Send pitches to hazineblog[at]gmail.com. This is an open-ended call.
Pitches should be no longer than 300 words and should be accompanied by a few sentences telling us who you are. Pitches (and pieces) are accepted in English; we accept essays and are open to different forms such as resource guides, archive reviews, as well as creative formats like zines and comics. We welcome different forms of style as we expand the essay category of the site but do have a look at the essays we’ve run previously, like this one on typography and this one on archivy, because they demonstrate what we’re really looking for: a strong point of view. Completed essays –if accepted– will be 2000 words or less. Deadlines for completed pieces are flexible. Each piece is paid at least 100 USD upon publication; we are in the process of adjusting our fees.
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.
Ever since podcasting hit the scene in the early 2000s, there has been no shortage of content on the Middle East, North Africa, the Islamicate world, and on Muslims. We’ve assembled a list here –subject to eventual updates and suggestions– of podcasts on history, current events, and culture from the Middle East, North Africa, the Balkans and the Islamic(ate) world more generally. We have also included a few other podcasts on Muslim cultural and intellectual matters. This list is by no means exhaustive and we look forward to developing it more: you can DM us suggestions on Twitter or Facebook and you can email us or comment below.
For those of you who are uninitiated in the ways of podcasts, a basic guide: you can either listen to them streamed from their sites on your computer or tablet or you can download a podcast catcher app (iPhones come preloaded with the Podcast app). Many are uploaded to Soundcloud (which is both a website and an app). Other podcast apps include Overcast, Stitcher, Anchor, Breaker, PodTail, Google Podcasts and Spotify. Once you’ve installed the apps, search by podcast title (or episode title) to find what you’re looking for. You can choose to subscribe or just listen to individual episodes (either via downloads or streaming) If you are having problems finding the podcasts on your podcast catcher of choice, please visit the podcast’s homepage to see if it is only available on certain platforms.
The lobby of the American Research Center in Egypt (photo credit: N.A. Mansour)
At MESA 2019, Djodi Deutsch, Academic Programs Manager for the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE), participated in a discussion on doing research in Egypt today; she based this on years of working with ARCE fellows conducting dissertation research and other projects. She kindly shared this list of research sites in Egypt with us (and on social media!) to share with you. Note these are not archive reviews –we’ve hyperlinked the research sites that we do have reviews for– but we are working on bringing you Egypt-specific archive reviews, along with other content. Feel free to drop us a line at hazineblog@gmail.com if you want to write us a piece! For now, this guide should help you get a general sense of what is out there.
Statue of a Peasant Woman in the Agricultural Museum Gardens (photo credit: Taylor Moore)
Obviously Dar al-Wathaiq (the National Archives) and Dar al-Kutub are still accessible. Dar al-Wathaiq requires a lengthy application process you can begin by visiting the location on the Corniche. Dar al-Kutub, both at the Corniche and Bab al-Khalq are running as usual: these repositories are good for rare books, manuscripts, and periodicals.
Dar al-Kutub (Corniche Location) is on the right side of the image. The left side of the image is Zamalek, where the Majma al-Lugha al-‘Arabi can be found (photo credit: N.A. Mansour)
Here is the list itself, compiled by Djodi Deutsch
Maktabat al-Azhar (al-Azhar Library) in Cairo is reportedly about to move to a new location not far from the original location on Salah Salem Street, around the corner from al-Azhar mosque and al-Azhar Garden. Thus, it does not merit a full archive review. HOWEVER, one of our editors, N.A. Mansour, has been using it and she put together a Twitter thread with all the relevant information. Click through to read the thread in its entirety (you DO NOT need a Twitter account to read it) and we look forward to featuring an entire archive review when the library moves.
We at Hazine love our lists. So hot off the heels of our visual resource guide and our regularly updated blog-list, we have a list of online resources to share with you all: this is where you can find primary sources online or resources to help you get at primary sources. An earlier incarnation of this list is here, written by Zachary Foster. We’re including links to digitized Islamic manuscripts, digitized periodicals, digitized books, oral history repositories, online syllabi and material history archives, all relevant to Middle East, North African, Islamicate world, and Islamic studies. Note while many of these are open access, some are not. Standard rules apply: this is not a comprehensive list so tweet at us or email us and we’ll add things to our semi-annual updates to this list.
Let’s face it: every publication is better with images. Whether it’s a presentation, a blog post, a book, or just a paper, images engage an audience instantly. The internet is flush with images from Islamic art, architecture, and society, but reliable sources (with credit information) are more difficult to track down. So we’ve done it for you! Here are some of the best sites for finding credited visual resources for Islamic, Middle Eastern and North African Studies. Feel free to suggest more in the comments and we’ll update the list! Note this list is specifically focused on images and visual resources, but not necessarily manuscripts (for a guide to online manuscript collections, look at Evyn Kropf’s list here).
We recently tweeted out some of our favorite blogs to follow: we threw out a couple of names you probably know and some you might not have had the chance to follow. Then our followers (and some of the people we tagged) tweeted back at us some of their favorites (particular shout-outs to Rich Heffron, Hind Makki and M Lynx Qualey). Here it is, in list form, if you don’t follow us on Twitter. Please either comment bellow on your favorites, tweet at us, or email us at hazineblog@gmail.com and we’ll update the list as we go along!
The Centre des Archives Diplomatiques de Nantes (the Diplomatic Archives Center in Nantes or CADN) houses extensive collections of French diplomatic files from the 18th-20th centuries. Among scholars of the Modern Middle East, Nantes is most famous for its collections of documents produced by the French mandate in Syria and Lebanon, as well as the French Protectorates in Tunisia and Morocco. However, Nantes also contains thousands of boxes of French consular files from cities around the world. Additionally, the archive has files from several international organizations that France was involved in. Taken together, the CADN is an indispensable stop for anyone working on the Middle East or North Africa in the 19th or 20th centuries.
Image of handwritten signatures on a petition from CADN (photo credit: Joshua Donovan)
Statue of a Peasant Woman in the Museum Gardens (photo credit: Taylor Moore)
The Cairo Agricultural Museum complex, located right off of Salah Salem street in the neighborhood of Dokki, is a gem of object collections and archival holdings hidden in plain sight. Its under-utilized collections will be of interest to historians and social scientists working on agriculture, food, natural history, political economy, rural Egyptian history, and public works from the Pharaonic period until present day. The museum is also a rare find for scholars interested in material culture and museum studies in modern Egypt. Its exhibits stand as an archive in and of themselves. They provide material testament to developments in the natural sciences, anthropology, food science, visual culture, and curatorial practices as many of the collections and dioramas remain untouched since the first half of the twentieth century.
History
In 1930, King Fouad of Egypt established the Agricultural Museum in the Cairo suburb of Dokki in the palace of Princess Fatima, the daughter of the great Khedive Ismail. It is one of the first agricultural museums in the world—second only to the Royal Agricultural Museum in Budapest. The museum was officially inaugurated by King Farouk in 1938 when he selected the venue to host 18th International Cotton Congress. The Agriculture Museum was preceded by an array of agricultural expositions organized by the Khedival Agricultural Society (later Royal Agricultural Society), an organization determined to improve agricultural methods in Egypt, and “the lot of the fellah.” The society created a small agricultural museum in 1920. This initial collection was ultimately modified into a cotton museum, which later became a part of the “Fouad I Agricultural Museum” when it opened to the public (el Shakry, 2007).
The Museum’s initial collections consisted of an array of objects donated from scientific institutions throughout Egypt, including the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Agricultural Society, and the Egyptian Department of Antiquities. Hungarian artists oversaw the creation and curation of the museum’s first displays (Davies 2014). With its holdings “lying halfway between a museum of natural history and a purely agricultural museum,” the Egyptian government mobilized the museum as cultural and educational space for the public until the 1960s (Ghawas, 1972). For the next thirty odd years, the museum was essentially left for dead. Most of its artifacts and object collections were relocated to storage, and the exhibition halls were transformed into makeshift government offices, presumably for Ministry of Agriculture staff. In the 1990s, restoration projects began in earnest. As they were completed, sections of the museum were slowly reopened to the public beginning with the Hall of Ancient Egyptian Agriculture and the Cotton Museum in 1996. Currently, the museum complex is composed of seven exhibition halls (the museum pamphlet refers to these entities as small museums, or mutahif), a library, research laboratories, greenhouses, and a cinema. The grounds surrounding the museum have been maintained as a beautiful garden space, with two Pharaonic-style gardens located near the entrance to the Hall of Ancient Egyptian Agriculture.
Collections
As mentioned above the Cairo Agricultural Museum boasts seven exhibition halls which depict varying topics in natural history and agricultural science. The majority of the museum’s labels are in Arabic, however some exhibits provide English translations.
1. Scientific Collections
Whale Skeleton in the Scientific Collections Hall (photo credit: Taylor Moore)
The Scientific Collections Hall is the oldest in the museum. The first floor is dedicated to ethnographic materials that depict the social and economic lives of the Egyptian fellahin. The most stunning exhibits of this building are the large, life-size dioramas of a rural wedding procession, and a village souk complete with a community forn, a café with galabiyya-wearing men laughing while smoking shisha, and even a female fortune teller reading shells. There are also rooms specializing in rural handicrafts, “habits and customs,” and the High Dam. The second floor houses a large natural history collection of taxidermy animals native to Egypt and Sudan, with rooms specializing in the life-cycles of domestic farm animals, insects and crop pests, as well as a room of popular Egyptian products and manufactured food goods from the 1940s and 1950s.
Diorama of an Upper Egyptian Village Market in the Scientific Collections Hall (photo credit: Taylor Moore)
2. Botanical Revolution Hall
This hall, also referred to as the “Plant Kingdom Museum,” was established in 1935. Its
exhibits depict Egypt’s field crops, horticultural and garden plants, and popular agricultural machinery. The first floor specializes in grain crops such as wheat, barley, corn, and rice, and also has a room on onions and garlic. The second floor specializes in fiber crops, and rooms on fruits, vegetables, legumes, and more.
3. The Cotton Museum
In many aspects the original collection of the Agricultural Museum, the Royal Agricultural Society organized the Cotton Museum in 1920, and opened it to the public in 1926. The collections in their most recent state were inaugurated in the Cairo Agricultural Museum in 1996 on Eid el Fellah (a feast day commemorating the victories of the peasantry and the implementation of Nasserist agricultural reforms after the 1952 revolution). The collections explore the importance of the cotton crop over the long duree of Egyptian history in its many forms from field to finished product, and include rare cotton the seeds and fibers from varying species of cotton crop grown around the world.
4. Ancient Egyptian Agriculture
This collection highlights role of the Nile River and the importance of agriculture in the economic, social, and spiritual realms of Pharaonic civilization. Many of these collections were acquired between 1932 and 1938 as donations from the Egyptian Museum and the Egyptian Department of Antiquities. Cappers and Hamdy (20007) provide original catalogue entries for specimen in this collection as well as some in the “Greek, Coptic, and Islamic” collections below.
5. Agriculture in Greek, Roman, Coptic, and Islamic Periods
These collections represent the second stage of development in early Egyptian agriculture
from 332 BC, when Alexander the Great conquered Egypt, until the rule of Mohammed
(Mehmet) Ali Pasha in 1805. However, the majority of materials are concentrated in the Greek and Roman periods. They highlight the role of plants in society (from popular field crops to medicine), the raising of livestock, and the social lives of the peasant classes at in these periods.
A Poster Advising Consumers to Boil Milk to Prevent the Spread of Disease (photo credit: Taylor Moore)
6. The Syrian Hall
This exhibit, inaugurated on July 31, 1961 commemorates Egypt and Syria’s short-lived union in the form of the United Arab Republic from 1958 to 1961. Its contents include information on trade between the two countries, and provide a collection of Syrian handicrafts, produce, and rural life.
7. The Egypt-China Friendship Exhibition
Opened in 2013, this exhibit is composed mostly of art and ceramics donated from China
to illustrate the thriving political relationship between Egypt and China.
8. Library
The museum’s library is a quaint two-floor building with an array of books, periodicals, and maps ranging from the mid-nineteenth century until the early 2000s. The subjects of the collection focus on a variety of agriculture and “agriculture-adjacent” materials such as botany, horticulture, public works, livestock, geography, and the social and economic aspects of rural life. Some examples of publications held in the library include volumes of Mémoires Présentés à l’Institut d’Egypte from the 1880s until the 1930s, yearly reports from the Department of Public Works from the 1880s onwards, and a Ministry of Agriculture periodical entitled Zamīl al-Fallāḥ published in the 1930s. Certain publications of the Ministry of Agriculture can also be found here, however most of those materials are held in the library of the Ministry of Agriculture and the National Agricultural Library (both located down the street from the Agricultural Museum.) As far as I know, this collection has not been catalogued and I was only able to conduct a cursory survey of the holdings during my research there. Future researchers may find more than detailed in this review.
Research Experience
The Agricultural Museum and Library is easily accessible to researchers. Those that speak Arabic will have an easier time of things, although many of the museum and library staff know some level of English. As of 2016, the entry fee to the main collection halls, library, and gardens was 5 LE, with an extra fee to enter the Hall of Ancient Egyptian Agriculture. However, researchers must note that depending on the day, and maybe even the hour, particular halls or exhibitions may be locked and/or closed to visitors. Generally, the main exhibits in the natural history, or scientific collections, and the library are always open to the public.
The library, located near the research laboratories a ways off from the main buildings, is a charming and pleasant workspace. More often than not, researchers will have the reading room to themselves, sharing the space with only a handful of library staff. Madame Azza is the main librarian. After signing your name in a logbook, Madame Azza will ask you what kinds of materials you are interested in. You can give her specific texts or vague subject and she will bring the exact text, or texts that might interest you out to the reading room for you. If you are lucky, she may allow you to wonder through the upstairs stacks yourself. This is the area where most of the old periodicals, governmental reports, and “rare books” from 1880 until 1950 are housed.
Model of Honeycombs in a Beehive (photo credit: Taylor Moore)
Currently, there is neither known catalogue for the ethnographic and natural history collections, nor the holdings in the library. I was also not able to find information on the provenance of the museum’s collections. However, as of June 25 2017 the Egyptian Central Department of Archaeological Acquisitions examined and registered over 1,000 of the Agricultural museum’s ancient animal and geological artifacts. There may be a way to access the catalogue or reports from this investigation. Those wishing to work with certain objects or collections should get in touch with the museum staff directly. Although the museum’s pamphlet provides a phone number and an email address for researchers to direct their inquiries, it is recommended that scholars make requests in person to the museum staff who may put you in touch with the museum director. It is advised that researchers provide a statement in Arabic addressing their academic affiliation, research interests, and the collections they are interested in working with.
Unlike other archives in Egypt, such as Dar al-Watha’iq al-Qawmiyya (The Egyptian National Archives) and Dar al-Kutub (The Egyptian National Library) where photographs of materials are forbidden, or in the Egyptian Geographical Society’s Ethnographic Museum where photographs of the exhibits can be taken for a fee, the Cairo Museum of Agriculture allows researchers to take pictures of materials in both the library and the museum for free.
Transportation
The Cairo Agricultural Museum is located in the neighborhood of Dokki. The museum is an easy 25 minute walk from the Behouth (Dokki) or the Opera (Zamalek) metro stations. Given the museum’s location right off of Salah Salem, it is easily accessible via taxi, Uber, or Kareem as well. Researchers can simply direct them to “al-mathaf al-zara’i” or “wizarat al-zira’a.” There are a handful of restaurants, cafes, and kushks located near the museum, particularly in the directions of the Dokki Shooting Club (Nadi Es-Sid) and Mohandessin.
Contact Information (according to museum pamphlet):
Telephone: +2(02)33372933 and +2(02)37616874
Website: www.agrimuseum.gov.eg
Email: agri.museum@yahoo.com
Hours: Sunday through Friday 9AM-2PM; The museum is occasionally closed for maintenance and hours are liable to change.
The most in-depth descriptions of the museum, its history, and its exhibitions can be found in
Al-Mathaf Al-Zira’i Kama ’Arfithu (elKhattab, 2003), located in the museum’s library collection, Guide du Musée Agricole Fouad I , and the Bulletin of the Royal Agricultural Society.
Additionally, some of the most useful sources that cover the history of the museum, as well as its current state and collections are below. (I have also included limited secondary literature regarding the general history of agriculture in twentieth century Egypt as it pertains to the history of organizations such as the Ministry of Agriculture, the Fellah Department in the Ministry of Social Affairs, and the Royal Agricultural Society):
Davies, Claire. “The Anatomy of Melancholy: Cairo’s Lost Agriculture Museum.” Bidoun, no. 14 Objects: A Treasury of Bidounish Wonders (Spring/Summer 2008). https://bidoun.org/articles/the-anatomy-of-melancholy.
El Shakry, Omnia S. The Great Social Laboratory: Subjects of Knowledge in Colonial and Postcolonial Egypt. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2007, pp 125-126.
Ghawas, M. H. El. “The Agricultural Museum, Dokki.” Museum International 24, no. 3 (January 12, 1972): 174–76.
Hassan, Fayza. “The Forgotten Museums of Egypt.” Museum International 57, no. 1/2 (May 2005): 42-48.
Johnson, Amy J. Reconstructing Rural Egypt: Ahmed Hussein and the History of Egyptian Development. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press, 2004.
Meyer, Sara-Duana. “The Dimly Lit Marvels of Cairo’s Agricultural Museum.” Mada Masr (blog).. https://www.madamasr.com/en/2015/05/14/feature/culture/the-dimly-lit-marvels-of-cairos-agricultural-museum/.
Rivlin, Helen Anne B. The Agricultural Policy of Muhammad ’Ali in Egypt. Y First edition edition. Harvard University Press, 1961.
The most information regarding the museums collections focuses mainly on the Ancient Egypt collections. The texts below produce in depth information about their research experience at the museum, detailed information about the objects examined, and attempt to catalogue them and/or cite a catalogue given to them during their research:
Bober, Phyllis Pray. Art, Culture, and Cuisine: Ancient and Medieval Gastronomy. University of Chicago Press, 2001.
Cappers, R.T.J, and R. Hamdy. “Ancient Egyptian Plant Remains in the Agricultural Museum (Dokki, Cairo).” In Fields of Change Progress in African Archaeobotany, 165–214. Groningen Archaeological Studies 5. Barkhuis, 2007.
Crane, Eva. The World History of Beekeeping and Honey Hunting. Taylor & Francis, 1999.
Darby, William Jefferson, Paul Ghalioungui, and Louis Grivetti. Food: The Gift of Osiris. Academic Press, 1977.Ikram, Salima. Choice Cuts: Meat Production in Ancient Egypt. Peeters Publishers, 1995.
Taylor M. Moore is a PhD Candidate in Modern Middle Eastern History at Rutgers University. Her dissertation explores the entangled histories of magic, medicine, and museums in early twentieth century Egypt.
