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

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

“Five new members have joined the 29-voting member HMML Board...”

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

“Nestled in the streets of London, just northwest of St. Paul’s Cathedral, resides a...”

“For thousands of years, languages around the world have attempted to capture the sounds of animals...”

“Interwoven tapestry of the natural and spiritual worlds as observed through the Armenian liturgical calendar...”

“The most famous weather event in Maltese history occurred in the first century CE when...”

“The term “April showers” derives from the frequency of short and regular showers that are...”

“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...”

“Few things can impact daily life in quite the way that weather does...”

“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...”

“One of the most common uses of manuscripts over the centuries is to train children in reading and writing...”

“With their 1962 children’s musical Space Adventure...”

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

“The organ is not the first musical instrument that comes to mind when...”

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

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

“Among HMML’s microfilms of the Durham Cathedral Library...”

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

“The Arabic manuscript tradition is rich in medical works discussing remedies and...”

“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...”

“The Black Death pandemic of the 14th century dramatically reshaped many cultures...”

“How do you represent grief? For Marc Chagall, the Russian-born Jewish artist...”

“A choir of cowled monks around a shrouded casket, a body being laid into a coffin, a smiling skeletal figure, an old man sitting on a dung heap...”

“Khalīl ibn Jirjis Janāwī was a scribe, a collector of manuscripts, and an artist who was...”

“...each manuscript is an artistic production and requires physical labor performed by a single individual—the scribe...”

“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...”

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

“HMML’s Art & Photographs collection is full of fragments of the 15th and 16th century...”

“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...”

“The Great ʿUmarī Mosque in Gaza is the largest and oldest mosque in the Gaza Strip...”

“When Father Oliver Kapsner began to microfilm the medieval manuscripts at Kremsmünster Abbey, Austria, in late 1964, he could not have imagined...”

“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...”

“HMML’s first library partnerships were to photograph the collections of prominent libraries in...”

“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...”

“Born Ben-Zion Weinman in Starokostiantyniv, Ben-Zion came to New York City in...”

“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...”

“Among the well-known biblical narratives is that of the twins Jacob and Esau, and...”

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

“A group of women cluster together, several clutching the handles of lidded pots...”

“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...”

“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.”

“Pie. Today, for many, this tasty baked good with its short, flaky crust suggests associations of...”

“The history of Arabian Nights stories in Christian communities is still imperfectly understood.”

“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...”

“While some elements of the story are fiction, others are clearly inspired by real events in Khaybar.”

“Biblical narratives often leave the audience wanting to know a bit more.”

“We live in a world ravaged by a pandemic, by wars, by all manner of catastrophic and...”

“Have you ever heard a great joke, but then later when you tried to recount it for someone else, you couldn’t remember it?”

“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...”

“When people ask how we find new projects for HMML, I admit that sometimes they just come to us.”

“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...”

“Rome has long been a destination for travelers from around the world.”

“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...”

“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...”

“Many medical works from antiquity were translated into Syriac and transmitted through the...”

“Herbals—books describing the medicinal use of plants—have been important scientific sources for...”

“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.”

“HMML’s Malta Study Center has completed the digitization of the important Lettere consolari fonds now held at the...”

“The Khalidi Library in East Jerusalem and The Hill Museum & Manuscript Library announce that the complete digitized manuscript collection...”

“HMML’s Malta Study Center signed an agreement with the Archconfraternity of Our Lady of Mount Carmel...”

“HMML’s very own palimpsest fragment recently underwent high energy x-ray imaging at...”

“HMML began digitization at the Pontificio Collegio Armeno (PCA) in Rome in 2018.”

“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...”

“Ted Erho, a doctoral student at Durham University in England, recently spent six weeks at HMML studying...”

“L’viv is a Ukrainian city whose multicultural past survives in at least two forms: its buildings and...”