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HMML Stories — Collections
Collections that HMML preserves and shares.
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Getting it in Writing: Knowledge Preserved and Passed on in Handwritten Catalogs
“On a recent chilly October morning, I reached for one of HMML’s copies of...”
- Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman

Women in the Courtroom: Legal Documents in Timbuktu
“Despite the vastness of Timbuktu’s digitized archives, it is a collection dominated by men...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor

Postscript — On Our Behalf
“The manuscripts of Ethiopia and Eritrea come in all shapes and sizes...”
- Dr. Jeremy R. Brown

Anna Roede and the Fight for Sovereignty
“When Martin Luther proclaimed his 95 Theses in 1517, the resulting shockwaves...”
- Dr. Jennifer Carnell

To Timbuktu From a Land Far Away: Migrating Manuscripts
“Texts in West Africa were highly mobile...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor

The J.F. Hinnebusch Collection and the Writings of Jacques de Vitry
“John Frederick Hinnebusch, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1923, was the youngest...”
- Dr. Jan Vandeburie

Migration of Ideas through Printmaking
“When discussing the idea of migration in European art history, attention is often focused on...”
- Katherine Goertz

Enlightened by One Lamp
“Hindu traditions and Islam share a deeply intertwined history in the Indian subcontinent...”
- Abdullah Ansar

The Lord’s Song in a Foreign Land
“In the middle of the 19th century, Arabic-speaking immigrants began to appear among the waves of newcomers arriving in the United States...”
- Dr. Josh Mugler

But Ask the Animals, and They Will Teach You
“Animals in scripts as symbols of meaning and the art of communicating a message...”
- Dr. Ani Shahinian

Instruments of Grace and Judgement
“The refrain “The Lord works in mysterious ways” is rarely truer than it is in the Ethiopic Miracles of Mary...”
- Dr. Jeremy R. Brown

Lions and the Grand Masters of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem
“Considered the king of animals, lions frequently appeared on coats of arms used by...”
- Dr. Daniel K. Gullo

Creepy Crawlies and Little Beasts
“Antwerp seemed, in the 16th century, to be the center of the Western world...”
- Katherine Goertz

Like a Dog
“In Arabic literature, as with many cultures, dogs are viewed with some ambivalence...”
- Dr. Josh Mugler

A Decade in Mali
“It began with a dinner in 2013...”
- Dr. Columba Stewart

Decorative Birds in Syriac Manuscripts
“Bird watching is typically an activity that...”
- Dr. James Walters

HMML Board Welcomes New Members, Elects New Chair
“Five new members have joined the 29-voting member HMML Board...”
- Dr. Columba Stewart

What Are The Animals Trying To Tell Us?
“In historical Timbuktu—as in any part of the pre-modern world—animals were...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor

Where We’re Working: London
“Nestled in the streets of London, just northwest of St. Paul’s Cathedral, resides a...”
- Dr. Daniel K. Gullo

What Does the Fox Say? A Hierarchy of Animal Voices
“For thousands of years, languages around the world have attempted to capture the sounds of animals...”
- Dr. Jennifer Carnell

The Mysteries & Rhythms of Nature, Seasons, and Time in the Armenian Liturgical Calendar
“Interwoven tapestry of the natural and spiritual worlds as observed through the Armenian liturgical calendar...”
- Dr. Ani Shahinian

Let it Fall as Rain
“Few things can impact daily life in quite the way that weather does...”
- Dr. Jeremy R. Brown

The Frozen Tigris and Other Remarkable Weather Events Described in Syriac Colophons
“In the days before social media, how did people share a noteworthy weather phenomena...”
- Dr. James Walters

Music Awakens One’s Soul...
“An answer to the question of what it means to be human...”
- Dr. Ani Shahinian

Postscript — For Loving You Too Much
“One of the most common uses of manuscripts over the centuries is to train children in reading and writing...”
- Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman

Space Adventure: A Maltese Musical Fantasy for Children
“With their 1962 children’s musical Space Adventure...”
- Dr. Daniel K. Gullo

Arthur Vööbus: Preserving a Legacy
“Dr. Arthur Voobus was many things—a scholar, pastor, teacher, and refugee in exile...”
- Dr. James Walters

Nasheeds from West Africa: Uniting Texts and Sound
“All of Timbuktu’s family libraries that were digitized by HMML include numerous compositions that...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor

Where We’re Working: Lucknow
“HMML’s preservation work in India began in 2008 with the manuscript collections of...”
- Dr. Josh Mugler

The Legacy of Mūrisṭus’ Hydraulic and Pneumatic Pipe Organs in the Early 20th-Century Arabic Literary Culture
“The organ is not the first musical instrument that comes to mind when...”
- Dr. Celeste Gianni

A Christmas Hymn Sing-Along
“Singing is one of those amazing things...”
- Dr. Catherine Walsh

Deadly snakes and remedies against their venomous bites in the handy charts of a copy of the “Kitāb al-diryāq” (Book on antidotes)
“The Arabic manuscript tradition is rich in medical works discussing remedies and...”
- Dr. Celeste Gianni

Monastic Sisters on Their Deathbed: A Time to Remember
“The book of vows contained one manuscript...”
- Dr. Vevian Zaki

Instructions for Burial: The Last Will and Testament of Ephrem the Syrian
“Ephrem is perhaps the most widely known of all Syriac authors...”
- Dr. James Walters

Monuments to the Dead
“Grief, loss, and death itself were very much part of...”
- Katherine Goertz

Zaydī Manuscripts
“The story of the Zaydīs begins in approximately 740 CE, with a revolt along the...”
- Dr. Josh Mugler

Impressions of a Death Foretold: the Execution of Fra Sylvain de Bosredon
“In the days before they were going to kill him, Fra Sylvain de Bosredon woke up early in the morning to the dull sound of...”
- Dr. Daniel K. Gullo

Treatises of Consolation: Muslim Scholars Comfort Themselves and Others Who Have Lost Children
“The Black Death pandemic of the 14th century dramatically reshaped many cultures...”
- Dr. Josh Mugler

Grief on the Page
“How do you represent grief? For Marc Chagall, the Russian-born Jewish artist...”
- Dr. Catherine Walsh

Postscript — A Swedish Saint in Syriac
“Stories about saints, much like their relics, rarely remain tied to...”
- Dr. James Walters

Gone, but not Forgotten: the Office for the Dead in Books of Hours
“A choir of cowled monks around a shrouded casket, a body being laid into a coffin, a smiling skeletal figure, an old man sitting on a dung heap...”
- Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman

Khalīl Janāwī: Scribe, Collector, and Artist from al-Mīdān of Damascus
“Khalīl ibn Jirjis Janāwī was a scribe, a collector of manuscripts, and an artist who was...”
- Dr. Vevian Zaki

A Scribble of Scribes: Men, Women, and Children Copyists Across Mali’s Manuscript Collections
“...each manuscript is an artistic production and requires physical labor performed by a single individual—the scribe...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor

Tracing Scribal Genealogies in Syriac Manuscripts: The Naṣro Family
“The act of hand-copying a manuscript requires specialized skills that...”
- Dr. James Walters

Muḥammad Ṣādiq: A Scribe Between Manuscript and Print Cultures at the Beginning of the 20th Century
“A great opportunity to look at the interaction between manuscript and print cultures can be found in the Middle East...”
- Dr. Celeste Gianni

The Calligrapher Clément Perret
“In the mid-15th century, the invention of the printing press made books relatively easier to produce and...”
- Katherine Goertz

Learning to Write: Practical Aspects of Handwriting
“In 1492, the abbot of a Benedictine monastery in Sponheim, Germany, wrote a small paean to scribes and the act of writing...”
- Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman

Why so Many Fragments? Incomplete Manuscripts in the Timbuktu Collections.
“A large amount of the manuscripts digitized in Timbuktu, Mali, that we at HMML have cataloged are fragments...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor

Woodcut Fragments of the 16th Century
“HMML’s Art & Photographs collection is full of fragments of the 15th and 16th century...”
- Katherine Goertz

Postscript — Luqmān the Sage
“Luqmān the Sage (also known as Luqmān al-Ḥakīm, the wise) is a legendary character in Arabic and Islamic storytelling...”
- Dr. Celeste Gianni

Johann Wetzstein and the Qurʼan Fragments of Tübingen
“Johann Gottfried Wetzstein served as honorary Prussian consul in Damascus, Syria, from 1849 to 1861...”
- Dr. Josh Mugler

Reversal of Fates: Access Through Photographs can be a Counterbalance
“Cultural losses continue to beset communities around the world, especially in areas subject to armed conflict...”
- Ted Erho

Poetry and Agriculture, a Fragmentary Scrapbook
“Manuscripts are known for their idiosyncratic nature...”
- Dr. Catherine Walsh

Identifying Syriac Fragments in the Digital Age
“What would you do if someone handed you a page that had clearly been torn out of a book...”
- Dr. James Walters

Where We’re Working: L’viv, Ukraine
“In the early decades of HMML, the region beyond the proverbial Iron Curtain was out of reach.”
- Dr. Columba Stewart

Hiding in the Binding — Fragments in Rare Book Collections at HMML
“Much of human history remains for us today only in the form of smaller remnants or fragments...”
- Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman

Identifying Prohibited Books in Early Modern Malta
“Pope Paul IV (1476–1559) issued the Index Auctorum et Librorum Prohibitorum in 1559 to publicly identify books the...”
- Dr. Daniel K. Gullo

Ḫeruy Walda Śellāsē’s “History of Ethiopia”
“Printing reached Ethiopia rather late. In Europe, texts were occasionally printed in Ethiopic characters from...”
- Ted Erho

Censorship Without Censorship
“Maḥmūd ibn ʻUmar al-Zamakhsharī did not have an easy childhood. He was born in 1075 CE into a...”
- Dr. Josh Mugler

A Book You Would Love to Read...
“A book you would love to read is lost, altered, destroyed, buried, hidden, left unpublished, unwritten, banned.”
- Dr. Catherine Walsh and Margaret Bresnahan

ʻUmar al-Turūdī’s List of Unreliable Books
“ʻUmar ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr al-Turūdī, was a scholar from Kebbi, present-day northern...”
- Dr. Paul Naylor

Lifted on Wings
“Angels occupy an important place in monotheistic religions. They are mainly presented as celestial beings...”
- Sister Marie-Thérèse Elia

Microfilm Milestones
“HMML’s first library partnerships were to photograph the collections of prominent libraries in...”
- Dr. Josh Mugler

Feeling the Heavens
“In summer of 1917, the New York-based artist Rockwell Kent made a bold decision.”
- Dr. Catherine Walsh

Khwājahʹzādah’s Treatise on the Rainbow
“Rainbows are optical illusions caused by the reflection, refraction, and...”
- Dr. Celeste Gianni

Postscript — King Solomon the Gynecologist, a Forgotten Tale From the Syriac Book of Medicines
“The Syriac Book of Medicines is a fascinating compendium of medical lore from the...”
- Dr. David Calabro

Between the Sun and Moon
“Today, depending on what communities you are a part of, your concept of a year may follow a calendar that is...”
- Ted Erho

Astronomical Technology and Religious Practice in Islam
“Astronomical observation is built into the most basic religious practices of the...”
- Dr. Josh Mugler

Postscript — A Sister’s Vows
“In 1744, the French Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary established a convent in ʻAynṭūrah, Lebanon, known in Arabic as...”
- Dr. Vevian Zaki

Soup, with a Side of Reform
“A group of women cluster together, several clutching the handles of lidded pots...”
- Dr. Catherine Walsh

Where We’re Working: The Monastery of Santa Ursula
“When Cláudia Garradas learned about the opportunity to digitally preserve the archives of the Monastery of Santa Ursula...”
- Dr. Daniel K. Gullo

The Hard Work of a Market Inspector in Preventing Food Frauds at the Market of Tinnīs, Egypt
“There are several manuals in the Arabic literary tradition describing the profession of the...”
- Dr. Celeste Gianni

The Gouda Life
“Between 1585 to 1600 Maarten de Vos designed 141 engravings depicting hermits.”
- Katherine Goertz

A Syriac Poem on Wine
“Who doesn’t love a good glass of wine? White, red, or something in between, authors throughout history...”
- Dr. James Walters

A Man for All Seasonings
“It was the late 14th century, and Shīrāz was the city of poets.”
- Dr. Josh Mugler

The Case of the Mysterious Pie and the Amsterdam Theater
“Pie. Today, for many, this tasty baked good with its short, flaky crust suggests associations of...”
- Dr. Catherine Walsh

The Travels of the Ebony Horse
“The history of Arabian Nights stories in Christian communities is still imperfectly understood.”
- Dr. David Calabro

Arabian Nights of the Christian East
“On a shelf in the Syriac Orthodox Church of Saint George in Aleppo is a manuscript copied in Arabic Garshuni...”
- Dr. David Calabro

Want to Marry the Princess? Know thy Bible!
“Who hasn’t heard a fairy tale about a princess whose beauty moves the richest and...”
- Dr. Vevian Zaki

Icon Collection Finds a New Home at HMML
“This year, HMML received a large donation of Russian icons from the collection of Edmund Gronkiewicz...”
- Katherine Goertz

The Story of the Talking Camel and the Exploits of Ali Genre in West Africa
“While some elements of the story are fiction, others are clearly inspired by real events in Khaybar.”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor

Parabiblical Literature in the Horn of Africa
“Biblical narratives often leave the audience wanting to know a bit more.”
- Ted Erho

Tracing Folktales in Magic Texts — The Story of Umm al-Ṣibyān
“Despite having been contested in Islamic history by powerful groups rejecting them as illegitimate practices, magic and...”
- Dr. Celeste Gianni

Grave Tales, Engraved (and Etched)
“While many artists have provided illustrations for books, some works in the Art & Photographs collection at HMML were inspired by stories...”
- Katherine Goertz

Ottoman Soap Operas and Other Stories
“HMML’s digital collections include entertaining stories from a wide range of linguistic and...”
- Dr. Josh Mugler

The Book of Laughable Stories — A Medieval Joke Book
“Have you ever heard a great joke, but then later when you tried to recount it for someone else, you couldn’t remember it?”
- Dr. James Walters

The Emperor’s Manuscript
“Towards the end of Getatchew Haile’s first published catalog of Ethiopic manuscripts...”
- Ted Erho

Four Family Libraries in Jerusalem
“At many points in its history, Jerusalem has been one of the world’s most important cultural crossroads...”
- Dr. Josh Mugler

Malta Envisioned by an English Clergyman
“The highlights of the island included the harbor of Valletta, an elaborate and protective harbor famous for...”
- Dr. Catherine Walsh

Where We’re Working: The Balkans
“When people ask how we find new projects for HMML, I admit that sometimes they just come to us.”
- Dr. Columba Stewart

Travelers and Texts Crossing the Sahara
“Mobility was a central feature of individuals, societies, and texts within Muslim West Africa’s...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor

The Journey of One Armenian Manuscript
“In 1945, a pharmacist living in Lebanon—Manaseh Kaprielian—presented a 17th-century Armenian manuscript to...”
- Malina Zakian

When in Rome...
“Rome has long been a destination for travelers from around the world.”
- Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman

Protecting Travelers and Maritime Contacts in the Eighteenth-Century Mediterranean
“The great Age of Sail conjures in our minds vast stretches of ocean populated by...”
- Dr. Daniel K. Gullo

From Cairo to Mardin, Manuscripts on Camelback
“This note is the sole testament to the manuscript’s remarkable journey from Egypt to Mardin, a city in...”
- Dr. Vevian Zaki

Crossing the Red Sea in the 1640s
“In September 1647 CE, al-Ḥasan al-Ḥaymī left the port of al-Mukhā (Mocha) in...”
- Dr. Josh Mugler

Medicine, Ritual, and Magic in Ethiopia
“Towards the middle of the 15th century, the Ethiopian Emperor Zar’a Yā‘eqob, a prominent theologian and scholar, faced...”
- Ted Erho

Quarantine in Malta, a Print of the Lazaretto from the Mużew Nazzjonali tal-Arti
“The increased activity of Malta’s ports after the Aragonese conquest in 1283 led to a...”
- Cláudia Garradas

Medical Texts From Timbuktu — Local Pharmacological Remedies with Qur’anic Verses
“In West Africa knowledge of the Qur’an was often combined with local pharmacological traditions to...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor

Early Miniatures of Ethiopians
“On this day seventy-five years ago, an early-14th century illuminated gospel book arrived at the...”
- Ted Erho

An Anonymous Syriac Medical Compendium
“Many medical works from antiquity were translated into Syriac and transmitted through the...”
- Dr. James Walters

Accounts on Plague and Infectious Diseases from Three Arabic Manuscripts
“The disastrous impact of plague epidemics in the Middle East has been documented in numerous accounts...”
- Dr. Celeste Gianni

Yeɗi Sanba Ɓooyi, a Fulani Scholar and Poet
“Yeɗi Sanba Ɓooyi was a scholar who belonged to the Fulani, a traditionally nomadic people who...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor

Creating Cataloging Standards for Regional Names
“Yeɗi belonged to the Fulani people, one of West Africa’s many ethnic groups, which...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor

Medical Care for the Enslaved Mustafa Osmon in 18th-Century Valletta, Malta
“The Archivum de Piro in Valletta, Malta preserves a small invoice and...”
- Dr. Daniel K. Gullo

Postscript — A Fāʼidah
“Along with the direct physical resistance to this unjust trade, the text shows...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor

Digitization of the Lettere consolari fonds at the Cathedral Archives, Mdina, Now Completed
“HMML’s Malta Study Center has completed the digitization of the important Lettere consolari fonds now held at the...”
- Dr. Daniel K. Gullo

Hill Museum & Manuscript Library completes digital cataloging of Khalidi Library’s manuscript collection
“The Khalidi Library in East Jerusalem and The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library announce that the complete digitized manuscript collection...”
- Joe Rogers

Digitization of the Archives of the Archconfraternity of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Completed
“HMML’s Malta Study Center signed an agreement with the Archconfraternity of Our Lady of Mount Carmel...”
- Dr. Daniel K. Gullo

Ancient Writing Revealed During HMML Palimpsest Imaging at Stanford's SLAC Lab
“HMML’s very own palimpsest fragment recently underwent high energy x-ray imaging at...”
- Dr. Melissa Moreton

Where We're Working: The Pontificio Collegio Armeno, Rome
“HMML began digitization at the Pontificio Collegio Armeno (PCA) in Rome in 2018.”
- Dr. Melissa Moreton

Where We're Working: Missionary Society of Saint Paul, Harissa, Lebanon
“Lebanon is one of the most religiously variegated countries in the Middle East.”
- Dr. Melissa Moreton

Seeing the Invisible — Multispectral Imaging of Ancient and Medieval Manuscripts
“This year marks twenty years since the first significant efforts were made to use multispectral imaging (MSI) to reveal hidden...”
- Dr. Melissa Moreton

Digital copies of the Rossi, Ansaldi and Caetani Yemeni manuscript collections now available in vHMML Reading Room
Digital copies of the Rossi, Ansaldi and Caetani Yemeni manuscript collections now available in vHMML Reading Room.

Researcher Identifies Second-Oldest Ethiopian Manuscript in Existence in HMML’s Archives
“Ted Erho, a doctoral student at Durham University in England, recently spent six weeks at HMML studying...”