“What do you first picture when you think of an illuminated medieval European manuscript...”

“In 1714, Hippolyte Hélyot began publishing his monumental eight volume history of religious orders...”

“Armenian visual culture is represented in diverse materials that carry pattern, repetition, and memory...”

“West Africa has long been a site of textile production. Cotton has...”

“Textiles play a vibrant role in the churches of Ethiopia and Eritrea...”

“In early modern Europe, the election of the Grand Master of the Order of Saint John of Jerusalem was a momentous occasion celebrated...”

“In many Muslim communities, the annual celebration of the Prophet Muḥammad’s birthday is one of the most festive occasions of the year...”

“Have you ever celebrated a special occasion with a homemade gift? Perhaps you made...”

“Pick up any modern book today and you will likely find short quotes on the front or rear cover...”

“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...”

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

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

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

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

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

“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...”

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

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

“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...”

“In describing printed books, a cataloger looks for subjects or areas of study where...”

“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...”

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

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

“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...”

“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...”

“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...”

“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...”

“Johann Gottfried Wetzstein served as honorary Prussian consul in Damascus, Syria, from 1849 to 1861...”

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

“What would you do if someone handed you a page that had clearly been torn out of a book...”

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

“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.”

“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...”

“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...”

“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...”

“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...”

“The use of tobacco in the Sahel, whether smoking, chewing, or taking as snuff, was widespread and...”

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

“Between 1585 to 1600 Maarten de Vos designed 141 engravings depicting hermits.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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?”

“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...”

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

“People in past centuries would sometimes use the blank flyleaves and margins of manuscripts to...”

“The Archivum de Piro in Valletta, Malta preserves a small invoice and...”