Online Source: Islamic Scientific Manuscripts Initiative

https://ismi.mpiwg-berlin.mpg.de/drupal-ismi/

The mission of the Islamic Scientific Manuscripts Initiative (ISMI) is to make accessible information on all Islamic manuscripts in the exact sciences (astronomy, mathematics, optics, mathematical geography, music, mechanics, and related disciplines), whether in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, or other languages.

ISMI represents a collaborative effort between the Institute of Islamic Studies (IIS) at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, and the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science (MPIWG) in Berlin, Germany. At the IIS, ISMI researchers, and their colleagues at the related Post-classical Islamic Philosophy Database Initiative (PIPDI), have collected over 600,000 images from some 4,000 codices that have been the subject of in-depth examination. For their part, the MPIWG has developed an innovative, object-relational database (OpenMind) in which the data collected is stored and retrieved for analysis.

At present, the database contains entries for 2,200 “persons” (authors, annotators, copyists, correctors, dedicatees, illuminators, illustrators, inspectors, owners, patrons, students, readers, teachers, translators), who span the entire Islamic world from Islamic Spain to India and the borders of China, beginning in the 8th century and continuing until the 19th. We continue to electronically link these individuals with texts, manuscript witnesses, locations of teaching and study, and so forth.

 

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