By Deborah Schlein *19
Click on the images above to see more of each of these items.
What do the three manuscripts above have in common? Well, certainly they are representative of the enormous breadth and depth of intellectual output as well as manuscript production, ownership, and usage in the broader medieval and early modern Islamic world. But these three manuscripts in particular are held in two collections—the Houtsma and Littman Collections—which are a part of Princeton’s manuscripts of the Islamic world, itself the largest collection of its kind in North America.
Comprising over 16,000 titles within 12,000 volumes, these holdings contain manuscripts in Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, Urdu, and Malay, as well as other languages written across the Islamic world, defined here as spanning from North Africa and the Iberian Peninsula to Southeast Asia, with the majority of the manuscripts dating from the 12th to the 19th centuries. Major subject coverage includes:
- the religious sciences, including Qur’ans, hadith, or reports of the words and actions of the Prophet Muhammad, and texts on Islamic jurisprudence,
- poetry and literature,
- and the rational sciences, such as medicine, language and grammar, history, philosophy, and mathematics and astronomy.
The manuscripts of the Islamic world collection is one of our library’s major attractions – for researchers, students, faculty, and the broader public community—and, starting in 2021, colleagues across the library worked together to make a significant portion of it more accessible for all communities.
The Houtsma and Littmann Collections, of which the above three manuscripts are a part, make up a portion of the al-Madani library, a library that the scholar and bookseller Amin b. Hasan al-Hulwani al-Madani al-Hanafi (d. 1898) acquired and added to throughout his travels across the Arab world and during his years living in Cairo, the book capital of the region in the nineteenth century (the other parts of the al-Madani library are housed today at Leiden University in the Netherlands and the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin). Acquired by Robert Garrett (Princeton Class of 1897) in the early 1900s and then deposited at Princeton University Library as part of the larger Garrett Collection of Islamic Manuscripts, the al-Madani library collection reflects the history of 19th-century Arab scholarly interests and book collecting in the Middle East.
With this in mind, and knowing that a self-contained collection such as this, with its history as a personal library collection, would be of interest not only to scholars but also to a broader public, colleagues at Princeton University Library decided to make this portion of the al-Madani library collection more accessible through a project that entailed:
- Preservation and Conservation efforts, which principally involve minor paper repairs and stabilization procedures. These measures were undertaken to ensure the safe handling of the materials for digitization and reading room access.
- Catalog record updates, which make the manuscripts more discoverable by adding non-Roman scripts (Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, etc.), tagging special features related to paper, binding, illustrations, and notations, and expanding the overall description to make it easier to find a manuscript of interest
- Digitization, which ensures that anyone, anywhere can digitally view the manuscript in a catalog record and on a digital webpage for the collection
- and outreach work, which includes presentations to various research and public communities and a research guide for the manuscripts of the Islamic world collection, so that library patrons can more easily find the manuscripts they’re looking for
This is the al-Madani library project, and through collaboration across library departments and with the support of scholars from Princeton’s Near Eastern Studies department, anyone who wants to access these manuscripts, both in-person and online, may now do so.
For more information on the manuscripts of the Islamic world collection, be sure to visit our research guide. And to explore the digitized manuscripts of the al-Madani Library collection as well as other collection highlights in this group, visit our Manuscripts of the Islamic World DPUL (Digital Princeton University Library) webpage.
If you have questions and would like to connect with staff in Special Collections, including Mireille Djenno, Global Special Collections Librarian (who oversees the stewardship of these manuscripts), please contact us through our website.
Special thanks to the following for their hard work on this project:
- Jennifer Baxmeyer, former Assistant University Librarian for Metadata Services (retired)
- Joyce Bell, Islamic Manuscripts Project Cataloger
- Brenna Campbell, former Assistant University Librarian for Preservation and Conservation
- Melody Chen, Paper Conservator
- Richel Diaz, former Digital Imaging Technician
- Will Harris, Digital Imaging Technician
- Kim Leaman, Library IT Project Strategist
- Mick LeTourneaux, Rare Books Conservator
- Stephanie Luescher, PhD candidate in Near Eastern Studies
- Gillian Marcus, former Preventive Conservator
- Roel Muñoz, Library Digital Imaging Manager
- Will Noel, the late Associate University Librarian for Special Collections
- AnnaLee Pauls, Photoduplication and Reference Services Coordinator for Public Services, Special Collections
- Mir Salar Razavi, PhD candidate in Near Eastern Studies
- Marina Rustow, Khedouri A. Zilkha Professor of Jewish Civilization in the Near East, Departments of Near Eastern Studies and History
- Emma Sarconi, Reference and Outreach Specialist in Special Collections
- Deborah Schlein, Near Eastern Studies Librarian
- David Sutton, Digital Imaging Technician
- Victoria Wong, former Book Conservator
Deborah Schlein *19 is Princeton University Library’s Near Eastern Studies Librarian.
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