THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LEIDEN HAS BEEN HOLDING THE MOST VALUABLE ISLAMIC MANUSCRIPTS FOR 450 YEARS
The Manuscripts Department of the Leiden University Library, founded in 1575, houses the most valuable Oriental manuscripts. Of the 30,000 manuscripts available here, 6,000 come from the Islamic world, according to the GZT website.
The curator of the department, Arnoud Vroleik, notes that the Arabic manuscripts of the library collection are a rich source of information for the history of science. They allow both scientists and the general public to learn more about the contribution of the Islamic world to the development of science. “The collection symbolizes the 450-year-old Dutch scholarly interest in the religion and history of the Islamic world,” he says. The curator also said that researchers from different countries contact the Leiden University Library. They can study here all the manuscripts they have, except for the most valuable and dilapidated ones. Moreover, the site digitalcollections.universiteitleiden.nl hosts some digitized manuscripts.
Omer Kociigit, lecturer at the Institute for Middle East and Islamic Studies, has been studying at the Leiden University Library for 7 years. He said that the beginning of the collection was laid 15 years after the establishment of the educational institution itself, when the French philologist Joseph Just Scaliger was invited here. In those years, the East was considered a symbol of wealth and luxury, and many people tried to collect oriental manuscripts. In 1613, Arabic was first taught at the University of Leiden. 2013 marked the 400th anniversary of this event.
Omer Kociigit / Source: gzt.com
Omer Kociigit also said that a significant part of the collection consists of manuscripts collected in Istanbul by the Dutch diplomat Levinus Warner, who lived in the Ottoman Empire in 1645-1665. “When Warner died in 1665, he bequeathed about a thousand of the manuscripts he collected to the University of Leiden, and they were taken by sea from Istanbul to Leiden,” says the scientist.
In the Warner collection, which includes the most valuable manuscripts, there is a single copy of the “Necklace of the Dove” by Ibn Hazm. This book has been translated into over 30 languages.
Hüseyin Shen, who is a historian of science, was born in the Netherlands. He says that the collection of oriental manuscripts at Leiden University also includes texts brought by the Dutch orientalist and mathematician Jacobus Golius.
Leiden University Library (1610) / Source: en.wikipedia.org
“Golius purposefully collected scientific manuscripts. Rene Descartes specially came to Leiden to get acquainted with the manuscripts he brought, and lived here for some time,” says the scientist.
Shen said that these manuscripts can help fight prejudice against the Muslim world, prevalent in Europe. For example, his interlocutors are surprised when he shows them an ancient treatise on optics and says: “Here Kamal ad-din al-Farisi (d. 1319) correctly explains for the first time in history how a rainbow is formed.”
The scientist said that a fund was created in the Dutch city of Haarlem to promote the achievements of Muslim scientists: “We make using a 3D printer some of the tools invented by Muslim scientists and described by them in manuscripts stored at Leiden University. We are also trying to adapt them to the school curriculum so that students receive not only dry information from the textbook. We were able to 3D print Al-Biruni’s mechanical lunar calendar.”
Source: library.universiteitleiden.nl
Source: library.universiteitleiden.nl
Source: library.universiteitleiden.nl
Source: library.universiteitleiden.nl
Islamosphere