Collection of Brill Library

Publishing News - Publishing News

Date: 

 2012, February 15

Brill and Leiden University Libraries are proud to present the publication of 110,000 pages of Arabic manuscripts under the title Pioneer Orientalists: The Manuscript Collections of Scaliger, Raphelengius and Golius from Leiden University Libraries.
Leiden University Libraries has a world-famous collection of Middle Eastern Manuscripts. Its core collection consists of volumes brought together by the Leiden Orientalists Joseph Justus Scaliger (d. 1609), and Jacobus Golius (d. 1667). These include extremely rare, sometimes unique, manuscripts. The Golius collection in particular is well-known for its texts on mathematics and other Islamic sciences.
Brill and Leiden University Libraries have joined forces to scan and publish these manuscripts. This not only makes these valuable texts available to a larger community of scholars, it also helps to preserve these manuscripts, 30 of which were restored as part of the project. In total the collection consists of 267 manuscripts in 303 volumes, counting 109,517 pages. Most texts are in Arabic, with secondary texts in Ottoman Turkish and Persian.