“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...”

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

“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...”

“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...”

“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...”

“An answer to the question of what it means to be human...”

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

“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...”

“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...”

“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 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...”

“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...”

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

“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...”

“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...”

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

“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...”

“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...”

“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...”

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

“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...”

“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.”

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

“The highlights of the island included the harbor of Valletta, an elaborate and protective harbor famous for...”

“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 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...”

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

“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...”