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Al Jazeera Arabic Learning

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Al Jazeera Arabic Learning is a free open educational site, launched in 2013, affiliated with the Al Jazeera Media Institute.  The site represents Al Jazeera Network’s vision in promoting communication between people and cultures. This educational site aims to teach and spread the Arabic language as a bridge for human communication and cultural understanding.

The site contains various educational materials divided into two main themes Language of the Media and General Language. These materials are available in three language levels (beginner, intermediate, advanced) to develop the basic language skills of learners (speaking, listening, reading, writing).

Users can choose their preferred language interface as it is available in English, French and Turkish.

To maximize the learning experience from this site, first time users should take the  Arabic Level Test (available on the site). The test result will guide the user in choosing the appropriate educational materials that matches his/her language level.

The site provides distinguished interactive electronic services to its visitors, including:

  • A dictionary service to search for the meanings of words and phrases

  • An Arabic vocalization service

  • Question and answer service that allows the user to send questions and receive answers.

  • Blogging service that allows teachers to spread their thoughts and opinions related to the Arabic language

  • Morphological analysis service to know the origins of words and their morphological structures.
  • Formation service for text formation and tuning.

What do Arabic Learners think of Al Jazeera Arabic Learning site?

Watch this video .

 

Arabian Gulf Digital Archive

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The Arabian Gulf Digital Archive (“AGDA”) is an online archive that showcases historical and cultural materials from the Arabian Gulf. The contents span two centuries and offer an insight into the past with some material previously unseen by the general public.

The National Archives of the United Arab Emirates (“NA”) collects documents of special historical value to the UAE, Gulf Cooperation Council states and the Arabian Peninsula, both from within the UAE and from abroad. The original documents often exist in archives not located within the Gulf region, making access difficult for those who don’t know where to look. AGDA presents electronic copies of these records along with tools to search, tag and download them.

AGDA contains, among other things, letters, memos, transcripts, photos and official correspondence from leaders and governments that shaped the events of their time.

AGDA is open and free to view and use by anyone. It makes primary source material, with descriptions in both Arabic and English, available to students, scholars, researchers and any interested members of the public.

  • It holds easy-to–use search filters, each with its own extensive list of additional search terms
  • It enables additional search functionality based on a selected date range
  • All search results can be downloaded, shared, bookmarked with any comments saved.

 

 

  • Results pages can be viewed as a single or multiple images, or as text and in various viewing formats
  • It is designed to aid accessibility for all users with tools to manipulate size, color and positioning of images and text
  • It is simple and intuitive functionality. It is also optimized using external search engines

 

 

Tips for Searching

  •     Use the keywords most relevant to your search, e.g. United Arab Emirates
  •     Use quotation marks to search for exact phrases, e.g. “United Arab Emirates”
  •     You can perform wildcard searches by using an asterisk ‘*’ (e.g. tele* will match documents containing telegram, telephone and telegraphic).
  •     Boolean operators: “united OR union AND arab emirates”
  •     Searches in English or Arabic will deliver identical results regardless of the language of the interface.

The Arabian Gulf Digital Archive website, “The Site” is wholly protected by copyright and is the property of the National Archives of the United Arab Emirates. To learn more, click here.

 

The Royal Library of Denmark: Oriental digitized materials

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The Oriental Collection

The Oriental collections in The Royal Library of Denmark comprise manuscripts, block prints, and printed books in languages of Asia and North Africa. A total of 5.000 items  from the 10th century forward. The collections are acquired for research in language, religion, and culture in its widest sense, including history.

Digital editions from the Oriental Collections were chosen for their beauty, rarity, calligraphy, bindings etc.

These materials are made available online and are subdivided into the following groups:

Digitized Arabic materials
  • Qur’an and other religious texts
  • Shafi’i fiqh
  • Shi’a works
  • Linguistics
  • Literature
  • History
  • Medicine and natural science
  • Magic
  • Printed books: literature

الاصول – Geometry

تصوير صور الكواكب – Astronomy

Digitized Persian materials
  • Manuscripts
  • Avesta and Pahlavi
  • Printed books

Rivayat – Ceremonial rites

Digitization of Urdu manuscripts
  • Narrative work in rhyming couplets
  • Qissai Benazir aur Badremunir or Sihr al-bayan by Mīr Ghūlam Hasan Dihlī [1727-1786 CE] (Copy from 1829 with illustrations)

Narrative work in rhyming couplets قصه بى نظير و بدر منير

Japanese manuscripts
Tibetan manuscripts
Mongolian manuscripts
Indian manuscripts
Sinhalese manuscripts
Oriental visual art

 

Availability
The manuscripts can be made available at Reading Room West, after previous arrangement (e-mail: kontaktbiblioteket@kb.dk)

Copies, photographs etc.
Requests for slides, scans and other types of reproductions should be directed to The Photographic Studio. Permission to reproduce is normally given, provided that it is for a non-commercial purpose and The Royal Library is duly credited.

The Arab Image Foundation

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The Arab Image Foundation’s evolving collection contains more than 500,000 photographic objects. The work of over 250 amateur photographers and 700 professional photographers and studios, the objects date from the 1860s to the present day, and span 50 countries

Objects in the AIF collection reflect a range of genres and styles – including documentary, reportage, industrial photography, fashion photography, etc.

In 2016, the AIF embarked on a major drive to digitize its collection, which is housed in Beirut. Since then, 28,000 photographs from its collection have been digitized.

The new AIF website launched in May 2019 with the support of the Royal Norwegian Embassy in Beirut, the Arab Fund for Arts and Culture (AFAC) and The Ford Foundation.

  • Images of collection items (25,000 so far) are now available to access and use.
  • All website content is available to view without registering for an account. In the near future, users will be able to register to download or bookmark images.
  • The website’s fresh, user-friendly interface and improved search function.
  • An interactive online catalogue offering image tagging and commenting, and display options.
  • A lab for digital experimentation and online residencies.

AIF Collection.

Tour the Lab

Explore projects, events and more.

Engage with the AIF

  1. Guided visits of the AIF
  2. Resources, The AIF Library
  3. Internships & Volunteering
  4. Consultancy
  5. Residencies at the Arab Image Foundation

Image Use Guidelines

Image policy covers image use, privacy rights, crediting and more.

The Foundation hopes to generate critical thinking about photographic, artistic and archival practices, promoting its collection as a rich resource for research, reflection and the creation of new works, forms and ideas.

OPenn: a primary digital collection available for everyone

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OPenn contains complete sets of high-resolution archival images of cultural heritage material from the University of Pennsylvania Libraries and other institutions, along with machine-readable descriptive and technical metadata.

All materials on OPenn are in the public domain or released under Creative Commons licenses as Free Cultural Works. Materials are free to download and use under the license assigned to each document. OPenn encourages that whenever possible, to cite the website and the holding institution when material are used. Many of the manuscripts on OPenn were digitized through grants and awards from public and private donors.

The data on OPenn is intended for aggregators, digital humanists, and scholars. Many of the images here are available via more user-friendly page-turning applications on institutional websites. OPenn regularly adds new repositories and new documents in order to bring more data to the public. Check back often to see what’s new.

Manuscript descriptions

Manuscript cataloging incorporates not only the identification of the author, title, date of origin, and provenance, but also, detailed descriptions intended to aid the palaeographer, codicologist, art historian, historian, and philologist. A description of the manuscript cataloging, with technical and non-technical detail, is given in the Technical ReadMe document.

The following example is taken from Columbia University, Rare Book & Manuscript Library, one of the housed repositories on OPenn.

Collection ID: 0032 | Metadata type:TEI MS Or 21 al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī al-hayʼah. / الملخص في الهيئة

Collection ID: 0032 | Metadata type:TEI MS Or 21 al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī al-hayʼah. / الملخص في الهيئة

Collection ID: 0032 | Metadata type:TEI MS Or 21 al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī al-hayʼah. / الملخص في الهيئة

Contents

Documents: the images of these documents are accompanied by detailed manuscript descriptions in machine-readable TEI format.

 

Images: there are three types of images  are delivered for each manuscript element.

MS Or 21: al-Mulakhkhaṣ fī al-hayʼah. / الملخص في الهيئة (India?, between 1500 and 1840?, Not dated; text was dedicated to Ulugh Beg when first composed; a marginal note on p. 2 also gives a date of A.H. 1256 (1840).)

Repositories

An OPenn repository is a group of documents belonging to a single institutional collection, all having the same metadata format. OPenn hosts 40 repositories from different institutions, including the University of Pennsylvania several repositories.

Curated Collections

An OPenn curated collection is a group of documents belonging to one or more repositories. A curated collection allows for the grouping of items by topic, theme, or project and may not have the same metadata format. OPenn hosts 5 curated collections:

Searching

OPenn utilizes standard Google searching techniques such as exact match, combine two search using AND/OR, excluding terms using -, etc. A simple search using keyword: prayers in OPenn search will look like this:

For additional information concerning licenses and use, citation style, alternate access methods and other technical stuff are all available in the OPenn: Read Me.

Islamic Painted Page

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Islamic Painted Page is a huge free database of Persian, Ottoman, Arab and Mughal paintings, illuminations, decorated Qur’an pages, book bindings as well as figurative paintings in manuscripts, albums and on single pages. The Database covers examples of the painted page dating from about 700 to 1900 CE and from over 270 collections worldwide.

The database is the work of Stephen Serpell MA MSc, a graduate of Oxford who works in Ipswich, UK. The website has been made possible with support from Iran Heritage Foundation, The Islamic Manuscript Association, German Research Foundation DFG and the Centre for the Studies of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC)

Some interesting features of the Islamic Painted Page:

  • Database Hints: The database provides a toggle button show/hide DB search hints, 8 hints are displayed to facilitate the search process.

  • Searching: The database offers users several options to search: by picture description, by collection and accession number, by place and date, by original author and title, or within a publication.

Also on the homepage, users can click on Go to search form which is an advanced search, allowing them to use any combination of criteria.

Here is an example of a result page for search by picture description only.

  • Links: The database offers links to assist finding online images, but some collections are much more fully digitized than others. Links will only work for items that have been digitized.
  • Transliteration: The database offers users the option of fully-accented Library of Congress transliteration, or “Anglicised” IJMES). In many cases Arabic script versions are also included.
  • Definitions: a short list of descriptions used in entries and their meanings.
  • Resources: In MS Excel format, users can download collections list, authors and titles list and publications list. The database is still being expanded, so the lists will continue to grow.

Islamic Philosophy Online PHILOSOPHIA ISLAMICA

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Islamic philosophy is an online resource dedicated to the study of Islamic Philosophy from Abbasid period to the present.

The website was started in July 2001 and contains hundreds of full-length books and articles on Islamic philosophy, ranging from the classical texts to modern works of Muslim philosophy. Materials are available in Arabic, English, French, German and Latin.

There are various areas to explore the website

  • Articles:  available either in PDF format or as a link
  • General: philosophy resources in PDF format or as a link
  • New publications
  • Philosophers:  a comprehensive list and resources of philosophers who contributed to Islamic philosophy (In chronological order)
  • Utilities: includes citation guide, online encyclopedias with articles on Islamic philosophy, date converter and local time

There is a separate sites for the following philosophers

Al-Ghazali, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd, Ibn Taymiyah, al-Kindi, al-Farabi, Muhammad Iqbal.

The site was also a home to the Journal of Islamic Philosophy. This is the first journal born online dedicated to the study of Islamic Philosophy. For more information see the Journal’s page.

 

 

 

 

 

The site is also a home to site for Prof. Mashhad al-Allaf.

Love and devotion: from Persia and beyond عشق و صميميت

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Love and devotion: from Persia and beyond is an online exhibit that celebrates the beauty of Persian manuscripts and the stories of human and divine love told through their pages from the early 11th century on.

Love and devotion showcases a rich selection of manuscripts from the world-renowned collection of the Bodleian Libraries of the University of Oxford, along with rare works from the State Library of Victoria and other Australian collections.

The exhibit is divided into four main topics: Persian poets, Stories and poems, Persia’s cultural sphere, and European interactions.

  • Persian poets includes the life and the work of significant poets like Nizami, Attar, Firdausi, Hafiz, Jami and many more.
  • Stories and poems retells epic stories and masterpieces that have been told over the centuries in the Persian world.
  • Persia’s cultural sphere explains how Persia’s strong culture of poetry and the book arts was adopted by Ottoman Turkey and Mughal India.
  • European interactions discovesr how Persian poetry intersected with European culture.

Multimedia section includes audio recordings of Persian poetry readings and video recordings of past conferences that address the theme of Love and devotion.

 

 

 

 

Education provides curriculum- based guides for exploring Persian stories and culture in the classroom., in addition to activities and resources.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Additional features are available, such as interactive map, image gallery, how to read a manuscript and glossary.

 

Afghanistan Digital Library – دافغانستان ديجيتال كتابتون

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Afghanistan Digital Library is an open access Library for Afghan publications from the period 1871–1930. The project’s long-term objective is to collect, catalogue, digitize and provide access to the first sixty years of Afghanistan’s published cultural heritage.

“Afghanistan’s legacy of publishing is in clear danger of disappearing. The earliest publications appearing in Afghanistan are extremely rare and, judging by their absence from library collections around the world, are to be found now almost exclusively in private collections, where public access is limited or non-existent. Decades of war in Afghanistan have further dispersed and destroyed holdings of books within the country itself.”

Phase 1 of the project started in 2005 and has drawn materials from the collections of several private collectors as well as from the holdings of New York University Library and the British Library. One year later, phase 2 of the project began. It has trained a staff at the National Archives in Kabul in conservation and digitization and has engaged in the cataloging and digitization of materials held in various public and private collections inside Afghanistan.

When Searching the Afghanistan Digital Library catalogue, it is good to know that the Search feature  is still in a pilot phase and they are working to optimize searching for the transliterated text on the site. If your search retrieved no results, browsing the collection is a better option to view what is available.

So far the library include Books, Documents and Newspapers, but eventually will include all published serials, pamphlets, and manuals.

The Afghanistan Digital Library is a project of New York University Libraries with the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, The Reed Foundation, and the W.L.S. Spencer Foundation.

The images available on this website may be freely reproduced, distributed and transmitted by anyone for any purpose, commercial or non-commercial, unless otherwise indicated.

Islamic Heritage Project

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Harvard’s Islamic Heritage Project (IHP) is a digital collection of 280 Islamic manuscripts, more than 50 maps, and 275 published texts from Harvard’s renowned library and museum collections. IHP materials date from the 10th to the 20th centuries CE. These materials are freely available to Internet users worldwide.

IHP is made possible with the generous support of Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal.

The IHP expresses the missions of its two coordinating partners.

 

The Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Islamic Studies Program at Harvard University, which enhances Harvard’s ability to keep pace with increasing demands for knowledge and understanding of the Islamic tradition.

 

The Harvard University Library Open Collections Program, which shares the University’s intellectual wealth by developing and freely sharing digital collections on topics of contemporary concern that support teaching and learning.

Totaling over 156,000 pages, which represent the following:

Regions
  • Saudi Arabia
  • North Africa & Egypt
  • Syria, Lebanon and Palestine
  • Iran, Iraq and Turkey
  • South, Southeast, and Central Asia
Languages
  • Primarily Arabic
  • Persian, and Ottoman Turkish
  • Urdu, Chagatai, Malay and Gujarati
  • Indic languages and several Western languages
Subjects
  • Religious texts and commentaries
  • Sufism
  • History
  • Geography
  • Law
  • Sciences (astronomy, astrology, mathematics, medicine)
  • Poetry and literature
  • Rhetoric
  • Logic and philosophy
  • Calligraphy
  • Dictionaries and grammar
  • Biographies and autobiographical works.

Materials digitized for the IHP are limited to those in the public domain. In selecting materials for the Islamic Heritage Project, materials that are available in digital form elsewhere were excluded. Photographs and works of art were deemed out of scope. Microfilm was selected only in a few cases.

Following the guidelines of the Houghton Library Single-Item Manuscript Manual to produce full-level records for each manuscript. These guidelines mandate use of AACR2/APPM, MARC 21, LCNAF, LCSH, AAT, and the application of ALA-LC Romanization tables. All records are stored in centrally supported library systems using open protocols (MODS, OAI–PMH).

The Harvard Library Viewer is a new image viewing platform based on the open source Mirador project and compatible with the IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) standard.

Besides core page-viewing capabilities such as page-turning navigation, table of contents, full text search and print (PDF download), the Harvard Library Viewer implements frequently-requested features, including:

  • Two-page and scroll views
  • Improved page image rotation, zooming and panning
  • Comparison of IIIF-compatible documents

Additional materials may be added to the IHP over time.