Editorials Stories
HMML Stories — Editorials
Curators and catalogers examine how specific themes appear across HMML’s collections.
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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

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

Migrating Monastic Books in Minnesota
“On September 8, 1876, four boxes of books arrived...”
- Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman

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

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

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

Contesting Saint Paul’s Shipwreck
“The most famous weather event in Maltese history occurred in the first century CE when...”
- Dr. Daniel K. Gullo

Metaphorical Meteorology, or: When a Sunny Day Offers More Than Sunshine
“In describing printed books, a cataloger looks for subjects or areas of study where...”
- Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman

Eclipses in Early Muslim History — Between Myth and Reality
“The best-known eclipse mentioned in Muslim sources was the solar eclipse that occurred on...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor

Remembering an Earthquake
“Many of the regions where HMML has worked are no stranger to earthquakes...”
- Dr. Josh Mugler

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

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

Visualizing the Audible: Depictions of Music in a Medieval German Manuscript
“Although music is an aural and tactile experience, human beings also have a...”
- Dr. Jennifer Carnell

Do You Hear What I Hear? The Audible and Inaudible in Medieval Music
“Among HMML’s microfilms of the Durham Cathedral Library...”
- Dr. Jennifer Carnell

I Know It When I See It (I Think…)
“I’m not a musicologist, but I am an avid fan of music from all times...”
- Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman

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

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

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

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

Build a Church, Build a Library
“If you want to establish a new church, you’re likely going to need some books...”
- Dr. Josh Mugler

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

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

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

Medieval Fragments in the Palazzo Falson
“When I arrived at the Palazzo Falson in Mdina, Malta...”
- Dr. Daniel K. Gullo

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

Poetic fragments at the Great ʿUmarī Mosque in Gaza
“The Great ʿUmarī Mosque in Gaza is the largest and oldest mosque in the Gaza Strip...”
- Dr. Celeste Gianni

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

“This Book is Free From Banned Content” — Ottoman Censorship of al-Yāzijī’s Arabic Lexicon
“The Lebanese poet, journalist, and linguist Ibrāhīm al-Yāzijī (1847–1906) has gained fame as a...”
- Dr. Vevian Zaki

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

Sandwiching a Forbidden Text
“The advent of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century led to...”
- Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman

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

Books that Survived the Ban — Syriac Manuscripts in India
“Christianity has a long, rich history in India. Some even trace the origins of Christian communities in India to...”
- Dr. James Walters

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

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

The Stars of Ben-Zion
“Born Ben-Zion Weinman in Starokostiantyniv, Ben-Zion came to New York City in...”
- Katherine Goertz

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

Signs in the Heavens — Astrological Books of Daniel in Eastern Christianity
“In Syriac Christian communities, astrological texts were sometimes appended to medical books and...”
- Dr. David Calabro

A Tale of Two Bears — Astronomy in Austrian Libraries
“When I was a boy, the night sky always fascinated me—stars, moon, planets, nebulae, comets, and...”
- Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman

Why was Esau so Hungry? Genesis 25 in Arabic Manuscripts
“Among the well-known biblical narratives is that of the twins Jacob and Esau, and...”
- Dr. Vevian Zaki

Smoking in the Desert — Between Supporters and Opponents of Tobacco
“The use of tobacco in the Sahel, whether smoking, chewing, or taking as snuff, was widespread and...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor

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

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

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

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

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 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

Traveling to France on Paper
“In the mid-19th century, a group of French artists began to reevaluate the art of...”
- Katherine Goertz

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

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

A Tale of Two Herbals, From Medicine to Food in the 16th Century
“Herbals—books describing the medicinal use of plants—have been important scientific sources for...”
- Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman

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

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