 | Among the Islamic manuscripts that the Beinecke Library recently acquired is a "Dala'il al-Khayrat wa-Shawariq al-Anwar fi Dhikr al-Salah 'ala al-Nabi al-Mukhtar" by Abu 'Abd Allah Muhammad ibn Sulayman al-Jazuli (d. 1465). The images shown here depict the tombs of the Prophet Muhammad and his two companions, the Caliphs Abu Bakr and 'Umar, in the Medina Mosque. |
Recently acquired Islamic manuscripts dealing with subjects as varied as Islamic conduct of life, astronomy, history, philosophy, poetry, mathematics, medicine, science and Sufism are on view in an exhibition at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.
Titled "Illuminated Islamic Manuscripts: A Selection of New Acquisitions at Yale University," the exhibit will run through late August. The manuscripts provide a window into pre-20th-century Islamic culture and learning, according to exhibition organizer Simon Samoeil, the curator of the library's Near East Collection.
The oldest of the 28 manuscripts on view is "Khamsah-i Nizami" ("Nizami's Quintet [Five Stories]") by the Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi (1140-1202), which was copied in 1563. Also on view is a 1609 copy of "al-Qanun fi al-Tubb" (Canon of Medicine, parts IV and V) by Avicenna (980-1037), a 1672 copy of "Futuh Afriqiya" ("The Conquests of Africa") and three Persian manuscripts, all copied in 1607: "Ma'rifat-i Taqvim" ("Knowing the Calendar"), "Fal Namah" ("Treatise on Fortune-Telling") and "Treatise on the Branches of the Occult."
Other items on display are astronomical tables in Arabic and Ottoman Turkish, written for the Ottoman Sultan Abd al-Hamid and copied in 1779, and an order issued in 1896 by the Ottoman Sultan Abd al-Hamid II to appoint a certain Sufi Shaykh as an imam (prayer leader) to a mosque in Istanbul. Two Arabic manuscripts with interlinear Javanese translation in the Arabic script on the "Pillars of Islam" and on "Islamic conduct of life" -- written on unusual Indonesian paper called Daluang, which is manufactured from the native Saeh tree -- are also among the items on view.
The Yale University Library Collection of Arabic and Islamic Manuscripts traces its history to 1870, when Yale professor Edward Salisbury, the first professor to teach Arabic at an American university, donated his collection. In 1891 the collection was augmented by the donation of the collection of Count Landberg, and in 1949 over 300 more manuscripts, mostly scientific and medical texts, were acquired from the Wellcome Museum of London. In the 1950s and 1960s several hundred more manuscripts were acquired from Oskar Rescher in Istabul, Turkey. The tradition of collecting Arabic and Islamic manuscripts to support the research and studies of Arabic and Islamic subjects in Middle Eastern languages continues to this day. More than 1,700 items have been added to the collection in the past five years, and Yale's collection of Islamic manuscripts today exceeds 5,000 items.
The Beinecke Library, 121 Wall St., is open 8:30 a.m.-8 p.m. Monday-Thursday, 8:30 a.m.-5 p.m. on Fridays; and 10 a.m.-5 p.m. on Saturdays. Admission is free. For more information, visit www.library.yale.edu/neareast/exhibit2007.htm.
T H I S
Manuscripts provide window into
pre-20th-century Islamic life, learning
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