Musing on Miniatures: An Introspective

By Elissa B.G. Mullins The miniature format recommends itself to a wide variety of genres—from devotional materials to political pamphlets; from almanacs to advertisements; from volumes designed for the small hands and big imaginations of children, to delicately hand-crafted artists’ books. All boast portability, stealth, ease of storage, and economical use of paper and binding […]

Adventures in Cataloging: Arabic Manuscripts at RBML Part 3

By Hanan Jaber Welcome to the final part of our Arabic Manuscripts at RBML series! Today, we are presenting the last four books for this collection.  Hand-written Qur’an – 1845 Of course I was expecting to find Qur’ans within the manuscripts just because many older books tend to be law books and religious texts. I […]

Adventures in Cataloging: Arabic Manuscripts at RBML Part 2

By Hanan Jaber Welcome back to part 2 of our Arabic Manuscripts at the RBML series! Today, we present to you some Islamic as well as Christian texts found in Arabic.  Asrar Namah by Shaykh Farid al-Din ‘Attar Amongst the Arabic manuscripts, there were also Persian manuscripts, such as Asrar Namah, a Sufi “secret” book […]