“The importance of these prints derives not only from the fact that they are early witnesses to the use of printing in the Middle East, or their textual and artistic content, but also from their rarity.” - Mark Muehlhaeusler, "Eight Arabic Block Prints from the Collection of...
When the name of Western Americana, Rare Books, and University Archives was changed to “Special Collections” in 1971, it reflected a major shift in the holdings. In addition to the growing emphasis of rare books, Special Collections Director, Everett Cooley, was also made responsible of...
“The most fundamental thing about a book is to find the right paper, because it’s the whole ground of the being of the book, and the quality of the paper is in some ways the most elusive … Critics of the book generally focus on...
from Paradise Lost, John Milton, 1688 “The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven..” We miss our books, we miss holding our books, we miss our classroom, we miss our students, we miss putting our books...
"They who sow courtesy reap friendship, and they who plant kindness gather love." -- St Basil the Great Commentaries St. Gregory (325?- & St. Basil (329-379) 9th c. AH/15th c. CE This manuscript, written on polished laid paper, is an Arabic translation from a Greek or Coptic original of...
Last semester, Rare Books loaned six of its medieval manuscript facsimiles to the Merrill-Cazier Library at Utah State University in collaboration with an art history course taught by Professor Alexa Sand. The upper-level course, “Special Topics Seminar in Medieval and Early Modern Art: Rare Books...
[caption id="" align="alignright" width="233"] Liber Moamin falconrii de Scientia venandi per aves et quadrupeds[/caption] “In quantum enim sunt reges non habent propriam delectationem nisi venationem” — Moamin “A wise falcon hides his talons.” — Proverb Facsimile. The so-called “Wiener Moamin” was created on the Italian penisula in the...
New Frontiers of Arabic Papyrology: Arabic and Multilingual Texts from Early Islam, edited by Sobhi Bouderbala, Sylvie Denoix, and Matt Malczycki, Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2017 Papers presented at the fifth conference of the International Society for Arabic Papyrology (ISAP), held in Tunisia in 2012. The cover...
P. Utah inv. 6o end of ninth century papyrus “J’ai pu y decouvrir une trentaine de documents juridiques arabes inedits de toutes epoques, parmi lesquels quelques beaux specimens de contrat de vente d’esclaves.” (I have discovered thirty legal documents in Arabic…, including some fine specimens of contracts for...
“But in the end it was the eunuch Kāfūr, the slave of their father, who held the strongest political hand over the country.” P. Utah Inv. 1383 Cairo, abt 954 CE paper Arabic papyrologist Naïm Vanthieghem has added a paper to Academia.edu, publishing an Arabic paper fragment held in...