Tag Archives: manuscripts

Book: فهرس مخطوطات خزانة الشيخ محمد بن عيسى بن سعيد المرساوني

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A new series entitled سلسلة فهارس مخطوطات نفوسة “Catalogs of Nafusa Manuscripts” has been launched by the Library and Heritage Department of the Shaykh ‘Ammi Sa‘id Foundation in Ghardaïa, Algeria. The first book of that series is a catalog of the collection (خزانة) of Shaykh Muḥammad ‘Isa Sa‘id al-Marsawani al-Nafusi al-Libi (who died in the early 1900s and was buried in Jerba) prepared by the “Nafusa Manuscripts Team”.

فهرس مخطوطات خزانة الشيخ محمد بن عيسى بن سعيد المرساوني النفوسي الليبي (المتوفي حوالي منتصف ق١٤ه دفين جزيرة جربة بتونس)، انجاز فريق نفوسة للمخطوطات، اشراف وتنسيق قسم التراث والمكتبة بمؤسسة الشيخ عمي سعيد، 2024

Sheikh Marsawani was originally from a village near al-Rheybat in the Nafusa Mountains, was educated in Egypt, and eventually fled to Jerba after the Italian conquest of Libya (for more on which see this recent article), bringing with him manuscripts from Egypt, manuscripts he copied himself, and a number of other texts and documents. This catalog includes a number of interesting manuscripts, including poetry by and about local sheikhs, as well as a variety of documents.

Many thanks to colleague Soufien Mestaoui for sharing a copy with me!

Early Modern Libyan Manuscripts in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France (sources for the study of early modern Libya i)

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A great deal of historical writing on early modern Libya depends on sources written by Westerners, whether colonial archival documents, or travelogues and journals written by travellers, British diplomats’ relatives, and so forth. Only recently are local documentary archives coming to light (e.g. the ones in Ghadames). But there are also Libyan historical texts from before the colonial era scattered in collections in Libya and elsewhere. Here and in some upcoming posts I’ll try to post some brief guides to these resources, many of which still require study and publication.

The Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris has a few interesting Libyan historical manuscripts (described in William MacGuckin de Slane’s Catalogue des manuscrits arabes, pp. 339-340). Fortunately, several of the manuscripts have been digitized and are freely available to download and read. Here is a brief description of each manuscript. Continue reading →