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Digital Collection

Yemeni Manuscript Digitization Initiative

The private manuscript libraries of Yemen, estimated at 50,000 codices, constitutes the largest and most important set of unexamined Arabic manuscripts in the world today. The Yemeni Manuscript Digitization Initiative presents, for the first time, access to manuscripts from three private libraries in Sanaa, Yemen, and virtually conjoins them to additional Yemeni manuscripts held by the Princeton University Library and Staatsbibliothek, Berlin.

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The texts in this archive were composed, copied, studied, and preserved by Zaydi scholars from the tenth century to the present. Zaydism is a leading school of Islam in Northern Yemen known for forms of rationalist theology that were abandoned in other regions. The Yemeni Manuscript Digitization Initiative is made possible by a Enriching Digital Collections Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG). The grant is administered by Princeton University Library and the Free University, Berlin in conjunction with a Yemeni NGO. Information on this grant and related projects to preserve and disseminate the manuscripts of Yemen can be found at ymdi.uoregon.edu.

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Princeton University Library claims no copyright governing this digital resource. It is provided for free, on a non-commercial, open-access basis, for fair-use academic and research purposes only. Anyone who claims copyright over any part of these resources and feels that they should not be presented in this manner is invited to contact Princeton University Library, who will in turn consider such concerns and make reasonable efforts to respond to such concerns.

Preferred Citation

[Identification of item], [Sub-collection name (if applicable)], Yemeni Manuscript Digitization Initiative Collection, Princeton University Library.

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