The Royal Danish Library in Copenhagen is the national library of Denmark and the university library of the University of Copenhagen. It is among the largest libraries in the world and the largest in the Nordic countries. The library’s collection of manuscripts date from the Middle Ages to the present. Some of these are available online and others can be viewed in the reading room.
Oriental Collection
The Oriental collection consists of manuscripts, printed works, and other material originating in non-western language areas and cultures, mostly Northern Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. With a few exceptions, the works in the Oriental collection are written in non-western languages like Arabic, Hindi, Japanese, Korean, Persian, Sanskrit, Tamil, and Turkish.
Oriental digitized materials
Digital editions from the Oriental Collection are chosen for their beauty, rarity, calligraphy, bindings etc. The Near Eastern collection comprises 515 Arabic, 450 Iranian (43 are Avestan), and 100 Turkish manuscripts. The oldest items date from the 10th century C.E. (Qur’ân mss. in Kufi script). The numbers of printed books for lending in Near Eastern languages are: Arabic 5500, Persian 1850, Turkish 5330, and Caucasian languages 600 (mainly Armenian and Georgian)
Digitized Arabic materials
Digitized Arabic materials fall under the following categories:
- Qur’an and other religious texts
- Shafi’i fiqh
- Shi’a works
- Linguistics
- Literature
- History
- Medicine and natural science
- Magic
- Printed books: literature
Digitized Persian materials
- Manuscripts
- Avesta and Pahlavi
- Printed books
The digital collection viewer provides full description of the manuscript and allows users to download, print, zoom in/out and share on Twitter and Facebook.
