Oriental Manuscripts in Belgrade University Library: From Oriental Texts to Qurans
With over 1.5 million documents, the library includes a rich collection of oriental manuscripts, ancient and rare Islamic and Quranic texts, doctoral theses, and historical publications.
According to the Farhangemelal website, the digitization project in this library has been ongoing since 2008, having made oriental manuscripts available in digital formats.
These manuscripts include Islamic, Quranic, philosophical, historical and literary texts written in Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish and Balkan languages.
There are more than 680 works in this digital collection. The oldest version dates back to 1206 AD. The largest number of versions are in Arabic (498 copies), Ottoman (126 copies), and Persian (9 copies in 13 volumes).
Studying the collection of oriental manuscripts in the Svetozar Marković University Library provides us with a unique perspective on the past and can be helpful in the historical analysis of scientific discourse (especially in the field of Islamic and rational sciences) in the region and, more broadly, in the Ottoman Empire.
All of these manuscripts have been fully digitized and are publicly available, with careful efforts made to identify the author, transcriber, place, and time of writing of each manuscript.
The collection of Persian manuscripts in this library includes 9 copies in 13 volumes, including prominent works by Iranian poets such as Sa’adi and Hafez, which were made digitally available in the Europeana Libraries digitization project from 2011 to 2013. This project aims to facilitate access to cultural and scientific heritage internationally.
The library's manuscript collection includes eleven Quran manuscript copies, the oldest of which dates back to 1543.
The study of these manuscripts, along with a focus on the scribes, place, and time of writing, allows us to sketch a part of the intellectual and scholarly heritage of the region.
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