“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...”

“When we think of medieval manuscripts in general, we may imagine male monastic scribes...”

“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...”

“The manuscripts of Ethiopia and Eritrea come in all shapes and sizes...”

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

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

“Have you ever wondered why gingerbread is a common part of Christmas traditions?”

“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...”

“Animals in scripts as symbols of meaning and the art of communicating a message...”

“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...”

“In the New Testament, Acts of the Apostles (17:34), Luke describes the ‘marketplace of ideas’ in Athens...”

“In Arabic literature, as with many cultures, dogs are viewed with some ambivalence...”

“It began with a dinner in 2013...”

“Bird watching is typically an activity that...”

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

“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...”

“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...”

“All of Timbuktu’s family libraries that were digitized by HMML include numerous compositions that...”

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

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

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

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

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

“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...”

“In 1492, the abbot of a Benedictine monastery in Sponheim, Germany, wrote a small paean to scribes and the act of writing...”

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

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

“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.”

“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...”

“Pope Paul IV (1476–1559) issued the Index Auctorum et Librorum Prohibitorum in 1559 to publicly identify books the...”

“Printing reached Ethiopia rather late. In Europe, texts were occasionally printed in Ethiopic characters from...”

“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.”

“The advent of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century led to...”

“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...”

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

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

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

“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...”

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

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

“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.”

“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.”

“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...”

“Towards the end of Getatchew Haile’s first published catalog of Ethiopic manuscripts...”

“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...”

“Mobility was a central feature of individuals, societies, and texts within Muslim West Africa’s...”

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

“The great Age of Sail conjures in our minds vast stretches of ocean populated by...”

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

“Much has been said about the scholarly achievements of Prof. Getatchew Haile...”

“In the mid-19th century, a group of French artists began to reevaluate the art of...”

“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...”

“The increased activity of Malta’s ports after the Aragonese conquest in 1283 led to a...”

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

“On this day seventy-five years ago, an early-14th century illuminated gospel book arrived at 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...”

“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...”

“Lebanon is one of the most religiously variegated countries in the Middle East.”

“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...”

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

“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...”

“Fr. Columba Stewart and his team have returned to Bamako, Mali, where he and...”

“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...”