JISC: Islamic Manuscripts

Press Release

JISC helps bring Islamic resources online for the first time. Two of the oldest known copies of the Qur’an will be available to researchers and scholars across the world today (July 8th 2009) – as part of a major project to digitise one of the richest collections of Eastern manuscripts.
The two Qur'ans, one of which may date from the 7th century A.D, are part of the priceless Mingana Collection, which is housed by the University of Birmingham.
The University's Special Collections department has painstakingly digitised more than 10,000 pages from the collection. As well as the Qur'ans the documents now online include unique illustrated manuscripts from the 16th century and early Arabic poetry. The project has been generously supported by JISC and The Edward Cadbury Charitable Trust.
Dr Peter Robinson from the Department of Theology, who has led the project,comments: “We’re delighted that for the first time some of the oldest and rarest Arabic manuscripts will be available for the public and scholars to view and enjoy.
“The Qur'ans are astonishing: one (number 1572) may date from within a century of the death of the prophet Mohammed. This would make it one of the oldest copies of the Qur'an in existence. However, the collection also includes poetry, illustrated texts and even coins covering nearly 1000 years.
“The process of digitising these fragile manuscripts can be painstaking, but the result is something that is a beautiful reproduction of the original.”
The Mingana Collection is unique, spanning more than 3000 manuscripts in 11 languages across nearly 1000 years of history. The team is now intending to continue the project to complete the digitising of the 3000 texts that make up the collection.
Another key part of the project is the Virtual Manuscript Room, which aims to make the manuscripts accessible to scholars and the general public across the world. This is done by embedding information about individual pages and passages of text.
By making searching for information far easier and more effective the Birmingham team hope that scholars will be able to comment on the works, add them to other websites and share them with the world.
Dr Robinson adds: “We don’t want these fabulous documents to be a static archive that is hard to access and use.
“A collection like Mingana ought to be viewed, commented on and added to.Technology provides an ideal opportunity to create an archive like that.
“We sometimes have very little information about the history of individual documents so we want to share them and get opinions and input from across the globe.”
Ben Showers, programme manager at JISC said: “There is a lack of high-quality digital material available for those studying Islamic Studies.The Mingana manuscripts, presented via the Virtual Manuscripts Room (VMR), will therefore be a valuable resource for researchers and teachers, both in the UK and internationally.
“Their presentation online is a crucial part of JISC’s £1.8 million ‘enriching digital resources programme’, a set of 25 projects which enhances the use of online content for teaching, learning and research.”
The virtual manuscript room can be viewed at: http://www.vmr.bham.ac.uk Find
out more about JISC's enrich digitisation programme at: http://www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/digitisation/enrichingdigi.aspx
Additional information about the University of Birmingham's Special Collections can be found at: http://www.special-coll.bham.ac.uk