University of Leeds' oriental manuscripts collection

Catalogue record

Notes

This collection aims to reproduce all but the most fragile of more than 500 oriental manuscripts belonging to the Department of Arabic and Middle Eastern Studies, University of Leeds, and now held in the Brotherton Library. The mss. are chiefly in Arabic (371) and Persian (c. 130), but include also some in other Islamic languages such as Turkish (8), Urdu (9) and Malay in Jawi script (1), as well a small number of Judeo-Samaritan texts in Hebrew.
Originally described by John Macdonald and M.J.L. Young in numerical order in their unfinished 'Catalogue of oriental manuscripts', the mss. in this microfilm edition are to be classified in subsets by broad subject category as follows, beginning with the Arabic works:
1) Korans and koranic sciences (now available);
2) Hadith sciences;
3) Islamic law;
4) Islamic theology, religious devotion, Sufism and philosophy;
5) history & biography;
6) language, rhetoric, prosody, literature & music;
7) science, technology & medicine;
8) Judeo-Samaritan & Christian literature;
9) Persian;
10) Turkish, Urdu & Malay.
The collection will be accompanied by a classified handlist, edited and introduced by Dr Roderic Vassie, former curator of Arabic at the British Library