Events in Egypt are changing the world. Perhaps the most inspiring has been the “civic responsibility” of the protesters. As at the Egyptian Museum they have taken action to protect their cultural heritage.
From Ismail Serageldin Director of the Bibliotheca Alexandria
February 1st, 2011Dr. Omar Khalidi – A Rare Scholar-Cum-Librarian – Obituary
December 1st, 2010Dr. Omar Khalidi, Senior Past President of MELA died Nov. 29 from an train accident. He will be greatly missed in MELA, MIT and the scholarly community.
http://lisindica.blogspot.com/2010/12/dr-omar-khalidi-rare-scholar-cum.html
Autograph of Maqrizi’s Khitat revealed at Univ. of Michigan
August 19th, 2010Graduate Student Discovers Arabic Manuscript in al-Maqrizi’s Own Hand
Just published in the newsletter of the Near Eastern Studies Department of the University of Michigan:
“Noah Gardiner, a third-year graduate student in the [Near Eastern Studies] Department’s AAPTIS division, is a member of the team that is re-cataloguing and digitizing our Library’s splendid collection of Islamic manuscripts. (This three-year project, “Collaboration in Cataloging: Islamic Manuscripts at Michigan,” is funded with a grant from the Mellon Foundation, see http://www.lib.umich.edu/collaboration-cataloging-islamic-manuscripts-michigan and http://www.lib.umich.edu/islamic/ .) In early April, Noah set to work on a manuscript of Volume 3 of al-Mawa‘iz wal-i‘tibar fi dhikr al-khitat wal-athar (or al-Khitat), a well-known work on the topography of Cairo and the history of Egypt. The author of the work is the famous and prolific Egyptian writer al-Maqrizi (1364-1442). This particular manuscript belongs to the A.S. Yahuda Collection and has been in our Library for decades. However, like most of these manuscripts, it was incompletely and sparsely catalogued and described. Noah soon noticed a discrepancy: while the paper seemed right for the late Mamluk era (when Maqrizi lived), the handwriting did not.”
The entire article can be read at this link: http://www.umich.edu/~neareast/newsletter2008-2010.pdf
Syrian writer wins Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature
December 15th, 2009Syrian writer Khalil Sweileh received this year’s Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Literature for his novel “Warrak Al-Hub” (The Scribe of Love) in an awards ceremony at the American University in Cairo in the presence of the jury, AUC Press President Mark Linz, the AUC Provost and an audience of journalists, writers and artists.
For the full story, see http://www.thedailynewsegypt.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=26438
New online journal: Kyoto Bulletin of Islamic Area Studies
December 15th, 2009[posted to MELANET-L 14 December 2009 by A. Riedlmayer]
Although one might not guess from its LC catalog record, recent issues of the Kyoto Bulletin of Islamic Area Studies (ISSN: 1881-8323), published twice a year since 2007, are largely in English–and full text of all articles and reviews in current and past issues is available and searchable online at no charge through the Kyoto University Research Information Repository.
You can check out the current issue, vol. 3 no. 1 (July 2009)–it’s a theme issue: “Nakba after Sixty Years: Memories and Histories in Palestine and East Asia,” at http://repository.kulib.kyoto-u.ac.jp/dspace/bulletin/kias
Clicking on the article title in the TOC will bring up a citation page, which gives options to download the text in .pdf or .html format.
Past issues of the Kyoto Bulletin of Islamic Area Studies have featured articles on a wide variety of subjects. A few randomly chosen examples:
- Data on Zawiyas in Contemporary Zanzibar
- The Invocation of Saints and/or Spirits by the Sufis and the Shamans: About the Munajat Literary Genre in Central Asia
- The Influence of the Ottoman Print Media in Japan: The Linkage of Intellectuals in the Eurasian World
- Democratization and Islamic Politics: A Study on the Wasat Party in Egypt
- The Islamization of the Economy and the Development of Islamic Banking in Pakistan
- Comparative Philosophy and Cross-cultural Dialogue in the Bosnian Context
If you’re tracking free online journals, consider adding this title to your library’s OPAC.
Season’s greetings and a happy new year to all,
Andras J. Riedlmayer, Bibliographer
Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture Fine Arts Library – Harvard University
http://www.h-net.org/people/person_view.php?id=124286
Virtual Museum of Iraq Website to be launched in early 2010
December 5th, 2009[The Virtual Iraq Museum has been initiated with the cooperation of Google and YouTube, consisting of 14,000 photos with text in Arabic, English, and French. It will be officially inaugurated in early 2010.]
http://www.virtualmuseumiraq.cnr.it/homeENG.htm
تم افتتاح موقع متحف العراق الوطني السمعي المرئي
هذا مشروع ضخم تم اطلاقه بالتعاون مع شركة قوقل واليوتيوب لانشاء موقع الكتروني كامل تستطيع زيارة متحف العراق الوطني ..وشارك في دعم هذا المشروع وزارة الخارجية الامريكية التي قامت بطرح هذه الفكرة بعد زيارتهم للعراق في ابريل الماضي
يحتوي الموقع على 14 الف صورة رقمية لمحتويات المتحف …وقام بتصويرها وتصميم المشروع شركة قوقل واليوتيوب وسوف يتم التعديل عليه الى ان يطلق بشكل رسمي في بداية 2010
الموقع مصمم بالعربي والانجليزي والفرنسي والان فقط الانجليزي يعمل والباقي تحت التجربة
shared on MELANET-L by
Aseel Nasir Dyck
Digitization of early Christian MSS in Middle Eastern monasteries
December 3rd, 2009A Benedictine monk, the Rev. Columba Stewart of St. John’s Abbey and University (Collegeville, Minn.)–executive director of the abbey’s Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, and a historian of the early monastic period–leads the museum’s ambitious and longstanding effort to find and digitize manuscripts held in monastic communities in the Middle East, Europe, and Africa. “Our primary focus is Christian traditions, because that’s our expertise,” Father Stewart says.
The work began in the 1960s, when a monk at St. John’s decided to microfilm manuscripts fading away in Austrian monasteries.
The project is currently active at more than 20 sites, but most of the museum’s current activity focuses in and around the Middle East, including Lebanon, Malta, Syria, Iraq, and Turkey. The museum also does intermittent work in Ethiopia.
slightly abridged & edited from the full article by Jennifer Howard
appearing in the Chronicle of Higher Education
29 November 2009
Rodgers (U. of Michigan) is 2009 Partington Award recipient
December 2nd, 2009[the following press release has been abridged; the entire text can be read here]
CAMBRIDGE, MA (Nov. 20)–Amidst an audience of colleagues and well-wishers, Jonathan Rodgers, Head of the Near East Division at Hatcher Graduate Library, University of Michigan, received the 2009 David H. Partington Award. The award was presented at the 38th annual conference of the Middle East Librarians Association (MELA), held this month in Cambridge.
The David H. Partington Award was established to recognize MELA members who have displayed a high standard of excellence and accomplishments in and contributions to the field of Middle East librarianship, librarianship in general, and scholarship, and who have given outstanding service to MELA itself.
Jonathan Rodgers serves as Head of the Near East Division and Coordinator of Area Programs at Hatcher Graduate Library, University of Michigan.
Dr. Rodgers has been an active member of MELA for over 20 years. In particular, he has given diligent and outstanding service as Editor of MELA Notes from 1997 to 2007.
In the words of Jonathan’s references, he “shows his serious commitment to the advancement of research and learning across the field of contemporary Middle Eastern and ancient Near Eastern Studies. His office is always open for students and faculty to come and consult on matters of research.”
FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:
Meryle Gaston
University of California, Santa Barbara
gaston@library.ucsb.edu
Lalami on Moroccan bookstores and Caldwell’s “Reflections on the Revolution in Europe”
December 1st, 2009Leila Lalami writes about one of her favorite bookstores in Rabat, with a nice photo of what real bookstores used to look like – and some still do: http://lailalalami.com/2009/support-your-bookstore/
Also check out Lalami’s timely review of Christopher Caldwell’s book Reflections on the Revolution in Europe: Immigration, Islam, and the West, in the Dec. 14, 2009, issue of The Nation, available online at http://www.thenation.com/doc/20091214/lalami/single
Andras Riedlmayer
Harvard University
“At-risk” websites for Arab human-rights organizations archived at University of Texas at Austin
December 1st, 2009The Human Rights Documentation Initiative (HRDI), a project of the University of Texas Libraries, has launched its website: http://www.lib.utexas.edu/hrdi
Among its resources, the website provides archived web sites of “at-risk” human-rights organizations in Arabic-speaking countries. In addition, it highlights human rights related archival materials at UT, informs the public on HRDI’s current documentation partnerships, and promotes human rights events and research occurring at The University of Texas at Austin.