“In November 1947, the Urdu scholar ʻAbdulḥaq entered his library in Delhi for the first time since the independence and partition...”

“In 1714, Hippolyte Hélyot began publishing his monumental eight volume history of religious orders...”

“Armenian visual culture is represented in diverse materials that carry pattern, repetition, and memory...”

“West Africa has long been a site of textile production. Cotton has...”

“A unique aspect of HMML Reading Room is that it allows us to see how texts travel among disparate people, places, and cultures...”

“In early modern Europe, the election of the Grand Master of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem was a momentous occasion celebrated...”

“In many Muslim communities, the annual celebration of the Prophet Muḥammad’s birthday is one of the most festive occasions of the year...”

“Have you ever celebrated a special occasion with a homemade gift? Perhaps you made...”

“When Cosimo Buonarroti (1790–1858) reacquired his family’s palazzo—the Casa Buonarroti—in 1812, he found...”

“Pick up any modern book today and you will likely find short quotes on the front or rear cover...”

“Church libraries in Ethiopia have often depended upon wealthy and powerful patrons...”

“The 1990s were chaotic and violent in the Balkan federation then known as Yugoslavia...”

“Despite the vastness of Timbuktu’s digitized archives, it is a collection dominated by men...”

“When Martin Luther proclaimed his 95 Theses in 1517, the resulting shockwaves...”

“Texts in West Africa were highly mobile...”

“When discussing the idea of migration in European art history, attention is often focused on...”

“Hindu traditions and Islam share a deeply intertwined history in the Indian subcontinent...”

“On September 8, 1876, four boxes of books arrived...”

“In the middle of the 19th century, Arabic-speaking immigrants began to appear among the waves of newcomers arriving in the United States...”

“The refrain “The Lord works in mysterious ways” is rarely truer than it is in the Ethiopic Miracles of Mary...”

“Considered the king of animals, lions frequently appeared on coats of arms used by...”

“Antwerp seemed, in the 16th century, to be the center of the Western world...”

“It began with a dinner in 2013...”

“In historical Timbuktu—as in any part of the pre-modern world—animals were...”

“Nestled in the streets of London, just northwest of St. Paul’s Cathedral, resides a...”

“For thousands of years, languages around the world have attempted to capture the sounds of animals...”

“Interwoven tapestry of the natural and spiritual worlds as observed through the Armenian liturgical calendar...”

“The best-known eclipse mentioned in Muslim sources was the solar eclipse that occurred on...”

“Many of the regions where HMML has worked are no stranger to earthquakes...”

“Few things can impact daily life in quite the way that weather does...”

“In the days before social media, how did people share a noteworthy weather phenomena...”

“An answer to the question of what it means to be human...”

“One of the most common uses of manuscripts over the centuries is to train children in reading and writing...”

“With their 1962 children’s musical Space Adventure...”

“Dr. Arthur Voobus was many things—a scholar, pastor, teacher, and refugee in exile...”

“HMML’s preservation work in India began in 2008 with the manuscript collections of...”

“The organ is not the first musical instrument that comes to mind when...”

“Singing is one of those amazing things...”

“Although music is an aural and tactile experience, human beings also have a...”

“Among HMML’s microfilms of the Durham Cathedral Library...”

“I’m not a musicologist, but I am an avid fan of music from all times...”

“The book of vows contained one manuscript...”

“Ephrem is perhaps the most widely known of all Syriac authors...”

“Grief, loss, and death itself were very much part of...”

“The story of the Zaydīs begins in approximately 740 CE, with a revolt along the...”

“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...”

“Stories about saints, much like their relics, rarely remain tied to...”

“The Gaza Strip is the smallest of the two Palestinian territories in...”

“If you want to establish a new church, you’re likely going to need some books...”

“The act of hand-copying a manuscript requires specialized skills that...”

“A great opportunity to look at the interaction between manuscript and print cultures can be found in the Middle East...”

“In the mid-15th century, the invention of the printing press made books relatively easier to produce and...”

“A large amount of the manuscripts digitized in Timbuktu, Mali, that we at HMML have cataloged are fragments...”

“Johann Gottfried Wetzstein served as honorary Prussian consul in Damascus, Syria, from 1849 to 1861...”

“When I arrived at the Palazzo Falson in Mdina, Malta...”

“Cultural losses continue to beset communities around the world, especially in areas subject to armed conflict...”

“Manuscripts are known for their idiosyncratic nature...”

“What would you do if someone handed you a page that had clearly been torn out of a book...”

“In the early decades of HMML, the region beyond the proverbial Iron Curtain was out of reach.”

“When Father Oliver Kapsner began to microfilm the medieval manuscripts at Kremsmünster Abbey, Austria, in late 1964, he could not have imagined...”

“Much of human history remains for us today only in the form of smaller remnants or fragments...”

“Jacques Hnizdovsky had arrived in the city the year before as a...”

“The Lebanese poet, journalist, and linguist Ibrāhīm al-Yāzijī (1847–1906) has gained fame as a...”

“Maḥmūd ibn ʻUmar al-Zamakhsharī did not have an easy childhood. He was born in 1075 CE into a...”

“A book you would love to read is lost, altered, destroyed, buried, hidden, left unpublished, unwritten, banned.”

“ʻUmar ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr al-Turūdī, was a scholar from Kebbi, present-day northern...”

“Christianity has a long, rich history in India. Some even trace the origins of Christian communities in India to...”

“In 2016, HMML’s Malta Study Center began the Malta Parish Archives Project to...”

“Angels occupy an important place in monotheistic religions. They are mainly presented as celestial beings...”

“HMML’s first library partnerships were to photograph the collections of prominent libraries in...”

“In the spring of 2012, the desert city of Timbuktu in northern Mali was attacked and...”

“Rainbows are optical illusions caused by the reflection, refraction, and...”

“The Syriac Book of Medicines is a fascinating compendium of medical lore from the...”

“Born Ben-Zion Weinman in Starokostiantyniv, Ben-Zion came to New York City in...”

“Today, depending on what communities you are a part of, your concept of a year may follow a calendar that is...”

“Astronomical observation is built into the most basic religious practices of the...”

“In Syriac Christian communities, astrological texts were sometimes appended to medical books and...”

“When I was a boy, the night sky always fascinated me—stars, moon, planets, nebulae, comets, and...”

“Among the well-known biblical narratives is that of the twins Jacob and Esau, and...”

“HMML Authority File (HAF) is a new open-access database created as part of...”

“The use of tobacco in the Sahel, whether smoking, chewing, or taking as snuff, was widespread and...”

“In 1744, the French Order of the Visitation of Holy Mary established a convent in ʻAynṭūrah, Lebanon, known in Arabic as...”

“A group of women cluster together, several clutching the handles of lidded pots...”

“When Cláudia Garradas learned about the opportunity to digitally preserve the archives of the Monastery of Santa Ursula...”

“There are several manuals in the Arabic literary tradition describing the profession of the...”

“Between 1585 to 1600 Maarten de Vos designed 141 engravings depicting hermits.”

“Who doesn’t love a good glass of wine? White, red, or something in between, authors throughout history...”

“It was the late 14th century, and Shīrāz was the city of poets.”

“Pie. Today, for many, this tasty baked good with its short, flaky crust suggests associations of...”

“The history of Arabian Nights stories in Christian communities is still imperfectly understood.”

“On a shelf in the Syriac Orthodox Church of Saint George in Aleppo is a manuscript copied in Arabic Garshuni...”

“Who hasn’t heard a fairy tale about a princess whose beauty moves the richest and...”

“This year, HMML received a large donation of Russian icons from the collection of Edmund Gronkiewicz...”

“While some elements of the story are fiction, others are clearly inspired by real events in Khaybar.”

“Biblical narratives often leave the audience wanting to know a bit more.”

“We live in a world ravaged by a pandemic, by wars, by all manner of catastrophic and...”

“HMML’s digital collections include entertaining stories from a wide range of linguistic and...”

“Have you ever heard a great joke, but then later when you tried to recount it for someone else, you couldn’t remember it?”

“At many points in its history, Jerusalem has been one of the world’s most important cultural crossroads...”

“The highlights of the island included the harbor of Valletta, an elaborate and protective harbor famous for...”

“When people ask how we find new projects for HMML, I admit that sometimes they just come to us.”

“In 1945, a pharmacist living in Lebanon—Manaseh Kaprielian—presented a 17th-century Armenian manuscript to...”

“This note is the sole testament to the manuscript’s remarkable journey from Egypt to Mardin, a city in...”

“In September 1647 CE, al-Ḥasan al-Ḥaymī left the port of al-Mukhā (Mocha) in...”

“Towards the middle of the 15th century, the Ethiopian Emperor Zar’a Yā‘eqob, a prominent theologian and scholar, faced...”

“In West Africa knowledge of the Qur’an was often combined with local pharmacological traditions to...”

“Many medical works from antiquity were translated into Syriac and transmitted through the...”

“Herbals—books describing the medicinal use of plants—have been important scientific sources for...”

“The disastrous impact of plague epidemics in the Middle East has been documented in numerous accounts...”

“Yeɗi Sanba Ɓooyi was a scholar who belonged to the Fulani, a traditionally nomadic people who...”

“People in past centuries would sometimes use the blank flyleaves and margins of manuscripts to...”

“Yeɗi belonged to the Fulani people, one of West Africa’s many ethnic groups, which...”

“The Archivum de Piro in Valletta, Malta preserves a small invoice and...”

“The Monastery of Saint Macarius is one of the oldest active Coptic monasteries in Egypt.”

“Along with the direct physical resistance to this unjust trade, the text shows...”

NEH grant for cataloging, to create an authority file system database, and work with Library of Congress (LC) and Virtual International Authority File (VIAF)

“The work of Dr. Getatchew Haile, long-time curator of the HMML Ethiopia Study Center...”

“HMML’s Malta Study Center has completed the digitization of the important Lettere consolari fonds now held at the...”

“HMML’s Malta Study Center signed an agreement with the Archconfraternity of Our Lady of Mount Carmel...”

“HMML’s cultural, religious, and geographic focus has expanded considerably since it began...”

“HMML’s very own palimpsest fragment recently underwent high energy x-ray imaging at...”

“In December, Fr. Columba traveled again to Mali to visiting HMML’s digitization sites in both...”

“HMML began digitization at the Pontificio Collegio Armeno (PCA) in Rome in 2018.”

“This year marks twenty years since the first significant efforts were made to use multispectral imaging (MSI) to reveal hidden...”

“HMML is pleased to announce the acquisition of “William Shakespeare’s Second Folio” to its...”

“HMML’s Malta Study Center has completed a digitization project with Heritage Malta to...”

“HMML’s Malta Study Center has completed the digitization of 90 manuscripts and rare Melitensia located at the...”

“The Malta Study Center at HMML has signed a partnership agreement with the Fondazzjoni Patrimonju Malti (FPM) to begin...”

“HMML is creating digital records of more than 22,000 rare and historically-significant documents from a...”

“Against a background of terrorism and the destruction of religious and cultural heritage sites, HMML...”

“Known as the Officium Civile Sacrae Inquisitionis (OSI) Fond, the collection contains records that date from...”

“HMML-trained technicians in Aleppo, Syria, have completed the digitization of 225 Armenian manuscripts...”

“HMML has begun manuscript preservation work in Jerusalem...”

“L’viv is a Ukrainian city whose multicultural past survives in at least two forms: its buildings and...”