This is an ever-growing list of the digital resources that have helped me in my research. It is an eclectic ensamble of digital collections, bibliographical resources, projects, interesting or curious pages to stumble on. For the moment, alphabetical order seems the most suitable arrangement.
COMSt – Comparative Oriental Manuscript Studies
The five year project is over, but the activities of the network continue. From this website one can download all the COMSt publications: News Letter, Bulletin, and the Handbook.
Hijri Date Converter
A useful tool, with a simple but detailed interface.
Islamic Medical Manuscript at the National Library of Medicine
The site provides a catalogue raisonné (including images) from the 300 or so Persian and Arabic manuscripts in the National Library of Medicine. This site, with its biographies, colorful images, and extensive historical accounts of medieval medicine and science is designed for students and everyone interested in the history of Islamic and European culture. The site includes an extensive glossary of medical, scientific, and book-production terminology linked to the text.
Refaiya
The project aims at the historical and codicological research on, database development and digital presentation of the private Arabic-Islamic library of the Damascene Rifā’ī family. This library, called “Refaiya” (Rifā’īya) – comprising 488 carefully preserved volumes and handed down over several centuries until the 19th century – is the precious core of the approximately 3,200 Oriental manuscripts kept at Leipzig University Library. It offers a trilingual database (English, German and Arabic), the collection has been completely digitized and made fully
available.
Julius Ruska
A website dedicated to this pioneering scholar in the field of the history of science, where the complete scholarly production is made available in pdf.
The Filāḥa Text Project
The purpose of the Filāḥa Texts Project is to publish, translate, and elucidate the written works collectively known as the Kutub al-Filāḥa or ‘Books of Husbandry’, to gather a corpus of digitized manuscripts, and to provide a variety of scholarly online resources on this topic.
ISMI – Islamic Scientific Manuscripts Initiative
A joined project of the Institute of Islamic Studies at the McGill University (Montreal) And the Max Plank Institute for the History of Science (Berlin) has made available online 123 scientific manuscripts from the collection of the Staatsbibliothek Berlin.
Qatar Digital Library
The Qatar Digital Library (QDL) is making a vast archive featuring the cultural and historical heritage of the Gulf and wider region freely available online for the first time. It includes archives, maps, manuscripts, sound recordings, photographs and much more, complete with contextualised explanatory notes and links, in both English and Arabic. The QDL has been developed as part of a 10-year Memorandum of Understanding on Partnerships between the Qatar Foundation, the Qatar National Library and The British Library.
Rare Books and Special Collections Digital Library (AUC)
Rare Books and Special Collections Digital Library at the American University in Cairo supports research and teaching in the arts, culture, and society of Egypt and the Middle East by providing online access to unique cultural heritage resources.
Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin – Orientalische Handschriften
The digital collections of the StaBi Berlin include a number of Arabic manuscripts: interesting items, a taste of this oceanic collection.
Ancient Medicine Blog
Very interesting blog (by Dr Sean Coughlin) that takes the move from ancient Greek medicine to explore philosophy, technical literature and history of science.