Manuscripts - Blog Posts

Evangéliaire (Gospels), f. 21v, St. Gallen, Switzerland c. 875-900 via Bibliothèque nationale de France, Public Domain

“Part of text written small. Rubrics, initals in black, red, blue.”, monastery of Augustinian friars, Haarlem, Netherlands ca. 15th century via The New York Public Library, No Known Copyright Restrictions (US)

Chi-rho page from the Book of St Chad, which dates from circa AD 730. It contains some of the earliest evidence of the Welsh language in written form

Codex Callistius, a 12th century “travel guide” to Santiago di Compostela. 

Egypt - The National Library of Egypt's Collection of Mamluk Qur'an Manuscripts

One hundred and forty Mamluk Qur'an manuscripts and bindings that can be securely dated to the Mamluk period (1250-1517 CE) by colophons and endowment and dedicatory statements. During this time, Cairo became the cultural, religious, and intellectual centre of the Islamic world. The manuscripts are almost unmatched for splendor, opulence, and size in the history of the Islamic arts of the book and they are key to our understanding of developments in Islamic calligraphy, illumination and bookbinding not only in Mamluk Egypt but throughout the Islamic world.

Guys, I just found the COOLEST resource.

The Chicago library just posted a bunch of old manuscripts online to get the public’s help with translation and transcription.  One of these manuscripts was “The Book of Magical Charms”, an anonymous grimoire from 17th century England.

This is PURE CHRISTIAN WITCHERY.  It’s got spirit conjurings, (use with care), sigils, (also use with care), spells and potions, (USE WITH CARE don’t be eating anything a 17th century manuscript says to eat without researching it first), prayers galore.  Some of it is in Latin, but if you hit the translator tab, a bunch of people have already translated some significant chunks.  Me myself will be digging out my Latin textbooks because I am THAT LEVEL OF NERD.

GO WILD GUYS, IT’S RIGHT HERE: http://publications.newberry.org/dig/rc-transcribe/charms

Timbuktu was a center of the manuscript trade, with traders bringing Islamic texts from all over the Muslim world. Despite occupations and invasions of all kinds since then, scholars managed to preserve and even restore hundreds of thousands of manuscripts dating from the 13th century.

But that changed when militant Islamists backed by al-Qaida arrived in 2012.

The Bad-Ass Librarians of Timbuktu tells the story of librarian Abdel Kader Haidara, who organized and oversaw a secret plot to smuggle hundreds of thousands of medieval manuscripts out of Timbuktu before they could be destroyed by Islamist rebels.  

Hear author Joshua Hammer tell the story here.

– Petra