“When Cosimo Buonarroti (1790–1858) reacquired his family’s palazzo—the Casa Buonarroti—in 1812, he found...”

“When we think of medieval manuscripts in general, we may imagine male monastic scribes...”

“Church libraries in Ethiopia have often depended upon wealthy and powerful patrons...”

“The 1990s were chaotic and violent in the Balkan federation then known as Yugoslavia...”

“Despite the vastness of Timbuktu’s digitized archives, it is a collection dominated by men...”

“The manuscripts of Ethiopia and Eritrea come in all shapes and sizes...”

“When Martin Luther proclaimed his 95 Theses in 1517, the resulting shockwaves...”

“Texts in West Africa were highly mobile...”

“John Frederick Hinnebusch, born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in 1923, was the youngest...”

“When discussing the idea of migration in European art history, attention is often focused on...”

“Have you ever wondered why gingerbread is a common part of Christmas traditions?”

“Hindu traditions and Islam share a deeply intertwined history in the Indian subcontinent...”

“On September 8, 1876, four boxes of books arrived...”

“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...”

“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...”

“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...”

“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...”

“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...”

“HMML’s preservation work in India began in 2008 with the manuscript collections of...”

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

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

“Ephrem is perhaps the most widely known of all Syriac authors...”

“Grief, loss, and death itself were very much part of...”

“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...”

“Stories about saints, much like their relics, rarely remain tied to...”

“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...”

“The Gaza Strip is the smallest of the two Palestinian territories in...”

“...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...”

“A great opportunity to look at the interaction between manuscript and print cultures can be found in the Middle East...”

“In the mid-15th century, the invention of the printing press made books relatively easier to produce and...”

“In 1492, the abbot of a Benedictine monastery in Sponheim, Germany, wrote a small paean to scribes and the act of writing...”

“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...”

“Cultural losses continue to beset communities around the world, especially in areas subject to armed conflict...”

“Manuscripts are known for their idiosyncratic nature...”

“In the early decades of HMML, the region beyond the proverbial Iron Curtain was out of reach.”

“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...”

“Much of human history remains for us today only in the form of smaller remnants or fragments...”

“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...”

“The Lebanese poet, journalist, and linguist Ibrāhīm al-Yāzijī (1847–1906) has gained fame as a...”

“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...”

“Christianity has a long, rich history in India. Some even trace the origins of Christian communities in India to...”

“Angels occupy an important place in monotheistic religions. They are mainly presented as celestial beings...”

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

“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...”

“Astronomical observation is built into the most basic religious practices of the...”

“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...”

“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...”

“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.”

“This year, HMML received a large donation of Russian icons from the collection of Edmund Gronkiewicz...”

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

“Despite having been contested in Islamic history by powerful groups rejecting them as illegitimate practices, magic and...”

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

“While many artists have provided illustrations for books, some works in the Art & Photographs collection at HMML were inspired by stories...”

“HMML’s digital collections include entertaining stories from a wide range of linguistic 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?”

“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...”

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

“This note is the sole testament to the manuscript’s remarkable journey from Egypt to Mardin, a city in...”

“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...”

“The disastrous impact of plague epidemics in the Middle East has been documented in numerous accounts...”

“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.”

“Along with the direct physical resistance to this unjust trade, the text shows...”

“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 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...”

Digital copies of the Rossi, Ansaldi and Caetani Yemeni manuscript collections now available in vHMML Reading Room.

“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...”

“When the Benedictine monks came to Minnesota in 1856, they brought with them a chest packed with the...”