Primary Sources: Medieval and Renaissance Periods: Islam, Muslims & Arabic

Online works from the Online Library of Liberty.

"Professor Aziz Suriyal Atiya, founder of the Middle East Center and the Middle East Library, compiled the collection. Dr. Atiya and his wife, Lola, purchased the collection over a period of several years from dealers in Egypt, Beirut, and London. The bulk of the collection originated in Egypt, in addition to a small group of fragments from the University of Chicago. A large number of pieces date to the period between 700 and 850 CE. The collection includes a significant number of documents from the pre-Ottoman period and thus offers unique source material on the political, economic, religious and intellectual life of Egypt during the first two centuries of Islamic rule and the period up to Ottoman domination."

Primary and Secondary source material on Islam and the Islamic world. A subset of the larger Internet History Sourcebook Project.

"... Harvard University has cataloged, conserved, and digitized hundreds of Islamic manuscripts, maps, and published texts from Harvard’s renowned library and museum collections. These rare—and frequently unique—materials are now freely available to Internet users worldwide."

"Digitized manuscripts from the Islamic Manuscripts Collection at the University of Michigan, mainly in Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Turkish and dating from the 9th to 20th century"

"...features 32 manuscripts from the Mamma Haidara Commemorative Library and the Library of Cheick Zayni Baye of Boujbeha, both in Timbuktu, Mali. The manuscripts presented online are displayed in their entirety and are an exemplary grouping that showcase the wide variety of subjects covered by the written traditions of Timbuktu, Mali, and West Africa."

The site includes "biographies, colorful images, and extensive historical accounts of medieval medicine and science..." The site provides a glossary and acatalogue raisonné (including images) of approximately 300 Persian and Arabic manuscripts available in the National Library of Medicine.

"... include manuscripts in Arabic, Coptic, Hebrew, Persian, and Turkish dating from at least as early as 800CE/183AH; and more than three thousand printed books from and about the Middle East. Highlighted in this collection is an eighteenth century Quran produced in Bukhara and a Persian manuscript of poetry by a Mughal princess."

"As a result of generous support from the David A. Gardner '69 Magic Project, the Princeton University Library is recataloging and initially digitizing 200 of its approximately 9,500 volumes of Islamic manuscripts from Robert Garrett and other sources. These 200 will be the core of the Princeton Digital Library of Islamic Manuscripts. These manuscripts constitute the premier collection of Islamic manuscripts in the Western Hemisphere and number among the finest in the world."

"... this online exhibition includes both religious and secular texts. Just as the Qur˒an is central to Islamic life, it is also the centerpiece of this presentation, followed by manuscript pages that illustrate works of science, biography, history, and poetry. Included are such important manuscripts as the Manāfi˓-i hayavān (The Benefits of Animals)—one of the finest surviving Persian examples—and the richest illustrated life of the beloved poet Rūmī (1207–1273). Also featured are pages from the Mughal and Persian albums that Pierpont Morgan acquired in 1911 from Sir Charles Hercules Read, Keeper of British and Medieval Antiquities at the British Museum, and miniatures illustrating the work of great Persian poets."