The Arab World

In terms of sheer number of items, pride of place in the section must go to the immensely influential Arabic-language collection, although defining its scope narrowly by language obscures its brilliance and diversity. Representative of the intellectual heritage of twenty-two modern Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East, it extends to publications and manuscripts in Arabic from many non-Middle Eastern countries to which Islam's roots spread long ago.

The Arab people have been known for millennia in the lands of the Middle East. Mentioned in monuments of the ancient Assyrians and Persians, they first grew prominent in the early days of the Roman Empire. The lost pink city of Petra, now in Jordan, was capital to the wealthy and important Arab Nabataeans. Palmyra, the Arabized rival to Rome, and its exotic queen Zenobia stirred the imagination of Roman historians. Arab merchants and travelers dominated the trade routes well before the Prophet's time.

The year A.D. 622, marking the Hijrah, was one of the true watersheds in the history of the Middle East. In that year the Prophet Muhammad fied from Mecca with his followers to the welcoming city of Medina. Revelation came to the Prophet at the same time his conquests grew in number and in A.D. 630 he took Mecca. Muhammad's triumphant return accelerated the Islamization of the entire Arabian Peninsula. By A.D. 640, Syria, Iraq, and Persia had been subdued. By the year 732, exactly one hundred years after the death of the Prophet, Egypt, Nubia, all North Africa, Spain, and Southern France, as well as much of Anatolia, were either directly in Muslim hands or under the influence of Islam. In all its facets, Islam had triumphed and was firmly rooted in the Near East. From A.D. 644 to 656 the third caliph, Uthman, compiled the text of the Koran, the Word of God, revealed to the Prophet through the angel Gabriel. The era of monumental literature composed in Arabic had begun.

Although much of the Arabic-language collection of monographs, newspapers, manuscripts, and microfilms is concerned with Islam in all its manifestations, the collection's scope is by no means limited to religious matters. Its balance of subjects and chronological range include contemporary Arab life in all its facets.

The Library has made a point of collecting manuscripts, early publications, and the literary products of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century authors, historians, and political leaders from the entire Islamic world. Early imprints from Europe include a Psalms of David (Rome, 1614), Erpenio's Testamentum Arabice (Arabic New Testament) (Rome, 1616), and al- Coranus (The Koran) (Hamburg, 1694). From Calcutta, India comes al-Shirwani's al-Ajab al-ujab fi-ma yufidu al-kuttab (The wonder of wonders to benefit writers) (1845), and from Aleppo, Syria, the second or third Arabic book published in movable type by Arabs in the Middle East, Kitab al-Injil al-Sharif al-Tahir (The Holy Gospel) (1706).

The international renown of the section's Arabic manuscript collection has also grown in the time since 1945, when the collection of approximately 1,300 manuscripts and 3,700 books assembled by Shaykh Mahmud al-Imam al- Mansuri, professor of religion at the al-Azhar University in Cairo, was purchased by the Library of Congress. These supplemented the manuscripts and other precious items that had been acquired in the 1920s and 1930s from the New York art dealer and authority on Near Eastern manuscripts, Kirkor Minassian, whose collection was especially rich in Islamic materials, prized among which are a Koran written in Kufi, the earliest of Arabic scripts, from the eleventh century and an extraordinarily executed manuscript cautiously attributed by some scholars to the father of Turkish calligraphy, Shaykh amdullah (A.D. 1437- 1520). Nor is the Minassian collection restricted to things religious. Arab intellectuals, inheritors of the ancient received tradition, were responsible for the translation of, commentary on, and cultural transmission of innumerable classics of antiquity, many of which exist thanks only to their efforts. The collection thus consists of valuable historical, scientific, and literary manuscripts as well, some with exquisite illuminations.

Arabic serials, numbering in the hundreds, underscore the utility of the Arabic collection as a whole. They contain information on virtually every subject needed by scholars and researchers of the Middle East, while at the same time they cover the most recent developments in the Arab world. The Library's collection of literary and political materials is counted among the world's finest. Examples of some historical serials collected are: al-Muqtataf, (Lebanon/ Egypt, 1876-1952); al-Hawadith (Tripoli, Lebanon, 1911-); al-Dawah (Egypt, 1906-49); and the most important periodical for Sunni Orthodox Islam, al- Azhar (Egypt, 1935-present).

The section focuses as well on the acquisition of magazines, journals, and newspapers from prominent Arab communities in Europe. These mushroomed during and after the Lebanese war of 1975-76, and include al-Mustaqbal (1977-89); al-Watan al-Arabi (1977-present); and al-Baith (1978-present). Mere possession of these vital documents is not enough. A much-needed program was initiated by the Near East Section in 1968 especially to ensure their preservation. To date, well over one hundred newspapers have been filmed thanks to this effort, thus guaranteeing their continued availability to researchers both now and in the future.

The section also boasts about two hundred magnificent Arabic calligraphy sheets, among which are fragments of the Koran in the Kufi script of the ninth and tenth centuries, exquisite Islamic bookbindings, and priceless articles such as a linen tunic from the Islamic world covered with the text of the Koran written on its front and back meant for a warrior to wear under his armor. Researchers into the Arab world have at their disposal many essential nonvernacular collections of supplemental materials. Among these are antique and modern maps in the Geography and Map Division, legal materials and works relating to law and Islam in the Law Library, and photographic collections in the Prints and Photographs Division. The Arab and Islamic musical traditions are well represented in the Music Division, which recently acquired the Arabic sound recording of an anthology of nawbas (suites) presented as a gift by the Morrocan government.

The astronomical and astrological sciences played a vital role in the life of the Middle East from remote antiquity up to, in many ways, the present. [Right] The constellation Draco, the Dragon, slithers across a page of the work of Abd al-Rahman ibn Umar al-Sufi (Iraq, d. A.D. 986) entitled Suwar al-kawakib (The depictions of [celestial] constellations). [Left] The table on the left-hand page of the manuscript, copied in A.D. 1417, names and locates the various constellations. (Near East Section)

The Manuscript Division provides many important collections for our researchers. For example, the Arabic, English, and French personal papers of the Lebanese academic, philosopher, author, and diplomat Charles Habib Malik (1906-87) as well as the English manuscripts and correspondence of Ameen Rihani (1876-1940), one of the most prominent Arab-American writers and poets, are to be found there.

Of special note is the Library's attempt to record and preserve the voices and works of contemporary Arab poets and authors as part of its Archive of World Literature on Tape. Among those recorded reading their poetry are the Egyptian poet Salah Abd al-Sabur (1931-81), Nobel prize laureate Najib Mahfuz (1912-), and the contemporary author Tibah Ahmad al-Ibrahim, a Kuwaiti woman. These are available for study by researchers in the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division.

Taken in its entirety, the Arabic collection and Arabica in the Library of Congress combine to create a celebration and a commemoration of the culture of the Middle East as a whole.

[Left] - Title page of volume 1 of the influential Lebanese/Egyptian journal al- Muqtataf. (Near East Section) [Center] - Arabic calligraphy has long been recognized for its subtle beauty and expressiveness. An example of the Near East Section's major collection of these prized creations is this sparsely yet richly decorated example in Taliq script from Persia, the text of which provides the rationale for its obvious artistic merit: "He who writes in beautiful calligraphy In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate enters paradise without judgment." (Near East Section) [Right] - The cover of one of the seventy-two compact disks that form the anthology of nawbas titled Anthologie al-Ala: musique andaluci-marocaine. (Music Division)