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This article contributes to the established scholarship on Sir William Jones (d.1794) by providing a detailed overview and analysis of the Arabic and Persian manuscript collection that Jones acquired both before arriving in India in 1784, and during his time living in Kolkata. 118 manuscripts in Arabic, Persian and Urdu and 69 Sanskrit manuscripts, as well as nine Chinese manuscripts, were transferred to the Royal Society library by Jones in 1792. These were then transferred to the India Office Library in 1876 and are currently housed in the British Library. As well as an in-depth survey of these manuscripts, this article provides important information on the manuscripts which remained in the Jones's possession after 1792 and which were sold, along with the rest of Lady Jones's (d.1829) library, at auction in 1831 after her death. Within this overview of the Arabic and Persian manuscript collections, there will be a sustained focus on the methods of acquiring manuscripts and Jones's curatorial management of his library.

Im Juni 2022 startete Qalamos, das neue Portal für Handschriften aus asiatischen und afrikanischen Schrifttraditionen. Erstmalig sind nun die Metadaten und Digitalisate von orientalischen Handschriften aus mehr als 20 deutschen Institutionen in einem gemeinsamen Portal zugänglich. Im Beitrag wird das Forschungsprojekt „Orient-Digital“ vorgestellt und der Entwicklungsprozess des Portals unter Einbezug von Nutzenden dargestellt.

This article deals with Malay letters and documents from the archives of the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie—VOC), dating to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The collection of “golden” Malay letters, which belonged to the governor- general of the VOC in Java (1704–1709) Joan van Hoorn, made a long voyage on the ship Sandenburg from Batavia to Cape Town and Amsterdam in 1710. Its cultural and historical value was firstly estimated by the outstanding Russian scholar and antiquarian N. P. Likhachev, who purchased it for the Paleographical Museum in Petrograd (St. Petersburg) in 1910. The pages of the fifty-seven diplomatic letters cover one of the most controversial periods of VOC history on the Archipelago, 1683 to 1710, the establishment of its relationships with local nobility and states. The collection represents the original letters of the sultans of Palembang, Gowa, Buton, Bone, Tallo, Banten, and Cirebon, and of prominent historical figures of Malay states as well as the famous Indian merchant from Surat, Abdul Ghafur. They are written in Malay (in Arabic graphic: Jawi and Pegon), Arabic, Javanese (in two scripts: Pegon and Carakan), Dutch, Spanish, Persian, and Chinese. Their investigation will contribute to the academic scholarship on the famous records, reconstructing the history of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) on the Malay Archipelago, and on the peculiarities of Malay letter writing in different languages, scripts, and regions.

Die sieben orientalischen Handschriften der Mainzer Wissenschaftlichen Stadtbibliothek wurden 2017/18 an der Arbeitsstelle Jena „Arabische Handschriften“ des Projekts „Katalogisierung der Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland“ der Göttinger Akademie der Wissenschaften erschlossen. Die Datenbank KOHD ist seit Jahresbeginn online.

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to review the literature about oriental manuscript collections in India and provide an overview of the area.Design methodology approach - A core set of literature on oriental manuscript collections in India was retrieved after doing a thorough literature search in different databases. Literature on various aspects of this topic was reviewed. The paper is organized based on various themes to make the study fruitful for various sections of society.Findings - Oriental manuscripts are present in different research libraries, university libraries and public libraries in India but university libraries are leading others in preserving these manuscripts, with few exceptions. Manuscripts are available in different oriental languages but mostly in Sanskrit. Every religious sect in India has contributed immensely in collecting and preserving these manuscripts. The contribution of famous kings of Indian history is also enormous in this regard.Research limitations implications - The review does not claim to be exhaustive, as most sources might have been skipped during the study for their non-availability.Originality value - This paper provides a concise overview of manuscripts present in different Indian libraries and research institution universities and provides a valuable entry point to the field of Indian manuscripts for research scholars, information scientists and other interested parties.

Neue Nutzungsszenarien und Forschungsansätze veränderten auch die bibliothekarischen und wissenschaftlichen Anforderungen an eine Erschließung orientalischer Handschriften. In diesem Beitrag wird, mit Schwerpunkt auf den Sammlungen der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, der Weg von den historischen Katalogen des 19. Jahrhunderts über die „Katalogisierung der Orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland“ hin zu einem elektronischen Bestandsnachweis aufgezeigt. Der Aufbau eines materialspezifischen Portals zum Nachweis aller Handschriften und Digitalisate ist der nächste Schritt.

Script and writing were among the most important inventions in human history, and until the invention of printing, the handwritten book was the primary medium of literary and cultural transmission. Although the study of manuscripts is already quite advanced for many regions of the world, no unified discipline of 'manuscript studies' has yet evolved which is capable of treating handwritten books from East Asia, India and the Islamic world equally alongside the European manuscript tradition. This book, which aims to begin the interdisciplinary dialogue needed to arrive at a truly systematic and comparative approach to manuscript cultures worldwide, brings together papers by leading researchers concerned with material, philological and cultural aspects of different manuscript traditions.

Today, al-Biruni Institute of Oriental Studies, Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan has more than 26000 volumes of manuscript collection, collected since the 10th century AD until now. Among the important manuscript collections found in this institute are manuscripts related to al-Biruni. This article aims to present and show the above catalogs of al-Farabi's manuscripts in different directions of science. This catalog consisted of 14 volumes ofSobranie Vostochnyh rukopisi Akademii nauk Respubliki Uzbekistan (English translation: Collection of Oriental Manuscripts of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan). This article discusses the list and description of the manuscript ofal-Farabi, which is in the above catalog. This paper found that al-Farabi's manuscripts at this institute are a significant example of the interaction, unity, and integration between religion and science.

The article focuses on the oriental manuscripts of the Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria of Turin, their history and vicissitudes. The analysis concerns the formation, enrichment and fortune of the oriental collection over the centuries, with emphasis on the fire that struck the Library on the 25th-26th of January, 1904. The collection mainly consists of Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Hebrew manuscripts. The latter, recently subject of in-depth studies, are not dealt with in this work, so the others are the true protagonists of the survey. The aim of the research is to provide information on the current state of conservation of the manuscripts, also paying attention to the group of manuscripts destroyed by the fire. Following this path, the case of the disappeared Gospel written in Turk- ish by the Capuchin missionary Gabriele of Villa del Foro is indicative. His relationship with the Armenian Mekhitarist Congregation of Venice sheds light on the knowledge and the study of the Armenian language in Italy and Europe during the last decades of the 18th century.