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Friday, October 16, 2015

The FIHRIST Catalogue

This catalogue provides a searchable interface to basic manuscript descriptions from some of the major manuscript collections in the UK. With the continuing contribution of manuscript records from UK libraries, Fihrist aims to become a union catalogue for manuscripts in Arabic script.

The Islamic Manuscript Association

The Islamic Manuscript Association is an international non-profit organisation dedicated to protecting Islamic manuscript collections and supporting those who work with them. It was formed in response to the urgent need to address the poor preservation and inaccessibility of many Islamic manuscript collections around the world.

The Islamic Manuscript Association:
  • Articulates standards and guidelines for best practice in cataloguing, conservation, digitisation and academic publishing so that Islamic manuscript collections may be made more accessible and preserved for posterity.
  • Promotes the highest ethical and professional standards in the care and management of Islamic manuscript collections.
  • Promotes excellence in scholarship on Islamic manuscripts, particularly Islamic codicology and disciplines related to the care and management of Islamic manuscript collections.
  • Provides a platform for presenting scholarship on Islamic manuscripts, particularly Islamic codicology and disciplines related to the care and management of Islamic manuscript collections, at its biennial conference at the University of Cambridge.
  • Provides a wide range of online resources about manuscripts and their care.
  • Awards grants to support the care of Islamic manuscript collections and advance scholarship on Islamic manuscripts.
  • Organises regular training workshops in cataloguing, conservation, digitisation and academic publishing as well as an annual workshop on Islamic codicology in cooperation with Cambridge University Library.
  • Facilitates dialogue between individuals with scholarly and professional interests in Islamic manuscripts and institutions holding collections of Islamic manuscripts.
The Islamic Manuscript Association includes among its members libraries and museums possessing collections of Islamic manuscripts as well as individuals with scholarly and professional interests in Islamic manuscripts. Over 600 persons from 25 different countries are members. Members have the right to vote, hold office, apply for grants and receive members' rates for the biennial conference and training workshops.
The Islamic Manuscript Association is an affiliated project of the Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies at the University of Cambridge.

Saturday, October 10, 2015

Altertumswissenschaften in a Digital Age: Egytplogy, Papyrology, and Beyond

Altertumswissenschaften in a Digital Age:
Egytplogy, Papyrology, and Beyond

Electryone an open-access journal co-edited by Prof. Magda El-Nowieemy of University of Alexandria

Electryone is an open-access of Classical Studies and the Ancient Mediterranean World co-edited by Prof. Magda El-Nowieemy of University of Alexandria. 

According to it's homepage its is: an English-language, peer reviewed online journal devoted to ancient historical and philological issues covering the period between the 2nd and 1st millennia BC and the Roman period A.D. Electryone welcomes articles between 4,000 and 8.000 words, shorter notes, responses, etc. up to 2,500 words, and book reviews. It also welcomes presentations of new publications, announcements for conferences and information about research programs.


Three volumes (2013-2015) are online available, see more in the website of the journal here.

Thursday, October 8, 2015

A documentary about Ain-Shams University on Youtube

A documentary film about my alma mater  in Arabic is now available on Youtube ( 08.10.2015).  For an older film about the same university, see below the second film.






Monday, October 5, 2015

22 lectures of Edward Said on Youtube

1- The Myth of the "Clash of Civilizations.


2- With Daniel Barenboim in Weimar (Germany), 1999 (in two parts):

Part 1


Part 2


3- Interview by Salman Rushdie at the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London (September 1986).

4- On Orientalism



5- The Shadow of the West.


6-  Exiles: A documentary from 1986.



7- Reflections on Exile and Other Essays


8- Imperial Continuity - Palestine, Iraq, and U.S. Policy ( May 8, 2003)


9-Orientalism April 16, 2003.


10- In Search of Palestine - Edward Said's Return Home (BBC).

11- Interview for the Dutch television by Michaël Zeeman.


12-"Talking Liberties" program with Jonathan Ree.

13- The Reith Lecturer Interview: BBC Radio 1993.

14-On the Future of Arab Americans: History, Politics, Religion (1999).

15-Memory, Inequality and Power: Palestine and the Univerality of Human Rights (University of California Berkeley February 19, 2003).

16-Midnight's Children Festival Events: "A Dialogue with Edward Said" (March 5, 2003).


17- Out of Place: A Memoir - Early Years in Palestine, Lebanon, and Egypt (1999).


18- On the Palestinian People (1989).


19- On Palestine April 9, 1999 with Noam Chomsky in Columbia University.

20-Democracy Now (1999) with Noam Chomsky.

21- UCLA Lecture (2002).

22- The last Interview.

Monday, September 21, 2015

Paulys Realencyclopädie ist now available through Wikipedia

All the volumes of Pauly's famous Realencyclopädie of the Ancient World are now available through Wikipedia in German Wikisource here. To know more about this German encyclopedia of classical scholarship, see the English article of Wikipedia about it here.


The First Historical Thesaurus of Arabic is to be produced in Doha

Inspired by HTOED or The Historical Thesaurus of the Oxford English Dictionary the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies is preparing the the first Historical Thesaurus of Arabic. An academic linguistic institution with corporate personality under the authority of the Doha Institute for Graduate Studies, which is lead by Azmi Bishara,  was established specifically for this purpose.  It's Aims, according to their website are:

  1. To produce a Historical Dictionary of the Arabic language.
  2. To create a comprehensive Corpus of Arabic.
  3. To derive sub-dictionaries from the Historical Dictionary of the Arabic Language.
  4. To publish lexicographical research and studies.​​​
A very much needed Dictionary indeed, but a huge task, I have to say.They are however taking it seriously. This is evident by their publication of a book called Towards an Arabic Historical Dictionary ​(439 pages).



To learn more about this project, s. here http://www.dohadictionary.org/EN/Pages/default.aspx

Saturday, September 19, 2015

El-Messiri's Encyclopedia of "Jews, Judaism and Zionism" in 8 Volumes


Even if not strictly classics, but this publication has to do with Greek and Latin. In the link below El-Messiri's eight-volume Encyclopaedia of "Jews, Judaism and Zionism", written in Arabic with an analytical/methodological form rather than an encyclopedic collection of information, is intended to provide analysis of the middle east crisis, the history of Jews and the history of Zionism, as well as an in-depth analysis of Zionism, its Ideology and beliefs, and ultimately the goals of such movement.


Friday, September 18, 2015

BMCR Reviews of some Graeco-Arabicum Books



1- Review of Dimitri Gutas, Theophrastus, On First Principles (known as his Metaphysics), Philosophia Antiqua 119. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2010. Pp. xxiii, 506. ISBN 9789004179035. $169.00.



Reviewed by Adam McCollum, Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, Saint John's University, Collegeville, Minnesota (amccollum@csbsju.edu), s. here http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2011/2011-11-    31.html.


2- Leonardo Tarán​, Dimitri Gutas, Aristotle Poetics: Editio Maior of the Greek text with Historical Introductions and Philological Commentaries. Mnemosyne supplements. Monographs on Greek and Latin language and literature, 338. Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2012. Pp. 99. ISBN 9789004217409. $226.00.



Reviewed by Michael McOsker, University of Michigan (mmcosker@umich.edu), s.here http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2012/2012-11-26.html .



Monday, September 14, 2015

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

Manar al-Athar open-access photo-archive

Manar al-Athar open-access photo-archive
 with over 17,000 photos for teaching, research, and heritage




The Manar al-Athar open-access photo-archive http://www.manar-al-athar.ox.ac.uk (based at the University of Oxford) aims to provide high resolution, searchable images, freely-downloadable for teaching, research, heritage projects, and publication. It covers buildings and art in the areas of the former Roman empire which later came under Islamic rule (e.g. Syro-Palestine/the Levant, Arabia, Egypt, and North Africa), from ca. 300 BC to the present, but especially Roman, late antique, and early Islamic art, architecture, and sacred sites.


Many of the monuments are now inaccessible to the West making this archive an important long-term resource for research, with downloadable high resolution images which are not watermarked. The records of monuments which are damaged or destroyed will also play a vital role in future restoration. Low resolution copies of these photographs for Powerpoint make them readily suitable for classroom use and demonstrating the shared heritage of the regions covered and the West. The images download with the caption, etc. and credit line in the metadata.

The archive has over 17,000 images already online, as of September 2015. Material is labelled in both English and Arabic to facilitate regional use, with the main instructions also available in some other languages.

http://www.manar-al-athar.ox.ac.uk



يهدف موقع منار الآثار الإلكتروني، التابع لجامعة أكسفورد، إلى تزويدكم بصور عالية الجودة للغايات العلمية والتعليمية والبحثية؛ إذ تحتوي الصور على نماذج معمارية وفنية لمواقع أثرية كانت ضمن مناطق الإمبراطورية الرومانية السابقة والتي وقعت لاحقاً تحت الحكم الإسلامي: مثل بلاد الشام وبعض أجزاء الجزيرة العربية ومصر وشمال أفريقيا وأسبانيا. تمتد الفترة الزمنية لهذه المواقع الأثرية من أيام الإسكندر المقدوني (حوالي 300 قبل الميلاد) والفترة الإسلامية إلى الوقت الحاضر. يعد موقع منار الآثار الإلكتروني الأول من نوعه الذي يزود روّاده بمواد معنونة باللغتين العربية والإنجليزية معاً.

Wednesday, September 2, 2015

Scholarships for Egyptians to study/research in Germany

I've just received this announcement in my email. It could be of interest to Egyptians who want to study/research in German universities.

GERSS - GERMAN EGYPTIAN RESEARCH SHORT TERM SCHOLARSHIPS

Autumn Call 1 September till 15 October 2015


The German Egyptian Research Short term Scholarship GERSS is a program jointly funded by the Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) and the German Academic Exchange Service, Bonn (DAAD) in order to finance short term scholarships for young Egyptian scientists to travel to Germany. The target groups of the program are researchers enrolled in MSc, PhD programs and young Post-Doctoral candidates. The scholarships may be awarded for a period from three to six months.

The scholarship shall enable advanced graduate students and young scientists to pursue part of their master’s, doctoral or post-doctoral research in a specific research project at German universities, archives, libraries or research institutes.

There are two calls for applications annually, namely the Spring Call (15.03. – 30.04) and the Autumn Call (01.09. – 15.10.)

Kindly note, application is only possible through the following link www.funding-guide.de

For more information, please find attached the GERSS info sheet.

For inquiries, please contact Mr. Adel Younis

gerss@daadcairo.org
Phone +20 2 2735 27 26 +20 2 2735 27 26 Ex: 146

Tuesday, August 18, 2015

Jordanus, an International Catalogue of Mediaeval Scientific Manuscripts

Jordanus, an International Catalogue of Mediaeval Scientific Manuscripts, provides information about mediaeval manuscripts written in Western Europe between 500 and 1500 A.D., which deals with mathematical sciences, i.e. arithmetic, algebra, geometry, trigonometry and mechanics. It is the result of research projects that were funded by the Volkswagen Foundation (1977-1985) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (1985-1989). The database was originally set up at the Lehrstuhl für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften of the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich by Prof. Dr. Warren Van Egmond and Prof. Dr. Andreas Kühne, and was later brought online by Dr. Gerhard Brey. It was provided an internet platform by King's College (London University) in cooperation with the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science in Berlin (Prof. Dr. Jürgen Renn). Jordanus is now available again on the server of the project Ptolemaeus Arabus et Latinus at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences in Munich. It was restored and reinstalled by Erwin Rauner.


More see here.

Ptolemæus Arabus et Latinus

Ptolemæus Arabus et Latinus is a project of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities and the University of Würzburg. It has been established as part of the Akademienprogramm of the Federal Republic of Germany and the German federal states for a period of 25 years beginning in 2013. The project is dedicated to the edition and study of the Arabic and Latin versions of Ptolemy's astronomical and astrological works and related material. The project director, Prof. Dr. Dag Nikolaus Hasse, is professor at the Julius Maximilian University of Würzburg, while the researchers of the project are based at the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Munich. The team includes two research leaders, Dr. David Juste and Dr. Benno van Dalen, and three full-time researchers, currently Dr. María José Parra Pérez, Dr. Henry Zepeda and the doctoral student Bojidar Dimitrov. A listing of the complete PAL team can be found here.

Digital Averroes Research Environment

The Digital Averroes Research Environment (DARE) collects and edits the works of the Andalusian Philosopher Averroes or Abū l-Walīd Muammad Ibn Amad Ibn Rušd, born in Cordoba in 1126, died in Marrakesh in 1198.

DARE makes accessible online digital editions of Averroes's works, and images of all textual witnesses, including manuscripts, incunabula, and early prints. Averroes's writings and the scholarly literature are documented in a bibliographical database.
More, see the website of the project here.

Sunday, August 9, 2015

"Avec toi de Suzanne Taha Hussein"s Arabic translation is republished by Hindawi foundation (free)

Hindawi foundation republishes the Arabic translation of the memoirs of Suzanne Taha Hussein about her life with Taha Hussein "Avec toi": De la France à l’Egypte: «un extraordinaire amour» Suzanne et Taha Hussein (1915-1973).



See the Arabic translation here. If you want the French buy it from here.

Friday, August 7, 2015

Arabian Epigraphic Notes An Open Access Online Journal on Arabian Epigraphy

Two new articles online!

The first two articles of the 2015 issue of AEN are now online:
  1. M.C.A. Macdonald, On the uses of writing in ancient Arabia and the role of palaeography in studying them
  2. A. Al-Jallad & A. al-Manaser, New Epigraphica from Jordan I: a pre-Islamic Arabic inscription in Greek letters and a Greek inscription from north- eastern Jordan.
The Arabian Peninsula contains one of the richest epigraphic landscapes in the Old World, and new texts are being discovered with every expedition to its deserts and oases. Arabian Epigraphic Notes is a forum for the publication of these epigraphic finds, and for the discussion of relevant historical and linguistic issues. The Arabian Peninsula is broadly defined as including the landmass between the Red Sea and the Arabo-Persian gulf, and stretching northward into the Syrian Desert, Jordan, and adjacent cultural areas. In order to keep up with the rapid pace of discoveries, our online format will provide authors the ability to publish immediately following peer-review, and will make available for download high resolution, color photographs. The open-access format will ensure as wide a readership as possible. more here http://www.arabianepigraphicnotes.org/.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Al-Thurayyā Gazetteer of Arabic Toponyms of Maxim Romanov

This is our first usable demo of al-Thurayyā Gazetteer, see here http://maximromanov.github.io/2014/11-20.html . Currently it includes over 2,000 toponyms and almost as many route sections georeferenced from Georgette Cornu’s Atlas du monde arabo-islamique à l'époque classique: IXe-Xe siècles (Leiden: Brill, 1983). The gazetteer is searchable (upper left corner), although English equivalents are not yet included; in other words, look for Dimashq/دمشق, not Damascus.

al-Raqmiyyātالرقميات : Digital Islamic History of Maxim Romanov

Digital Islamic History, see here http://maximromanov.github.io/  is the website of Maxim Romanov, an expert in digital Arabic, who will be joining the Leipzig team of Digital Humanities this September. 

Maxim Romanov says about himself that he  is a "Postdoctoral Associate (PhD, U of Michigan) at the Department of Classics and the Perseus Project, Tufts University, who studies Islamic historical texts with computational methods, currently focusing on the analysis of multivolume biographical and bibliographical collections".