By CNES
UCLA holds the second-largest collection of Arabic-script manuscripts in the Americas, including what may be the region's largest collections of Persian and Ottoman Turkish manuscripts. The collection includes manuscripts dating between 1100 and 1930, and contains texts on a wide range of subjects. UCLA Library is still in the process of cataloguing these manuscripts, primarily through its ongoing Islamicate Manuscripts Initiative (IMI).
On November 17, 2025, the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies and Professor Luke Yarbrough (UCLA Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures) co-organized a one-day workshop and a public symposium on the provenance of these manuscripts: where they came from. The event was generously co-sponsored by UCLA Islamic Studies, UCLA Library, UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies, UCLA Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History, and UCLA Division of the Humanities. It builds on Yarbrough’s several years-long efforts to shed more light on this largely unexplored and under-described collection.
The day opened with an invitation-only workshop, which gathered sixteen scholars and graduate students who worked on assessing and describing the manuscripts in one of the sub-collections. Two questions guided the assessment of these manuscripts during the workshop: How and from where did this object/collection get to UCLA? What were the movements of the object/collection prior to that? According to Yarbrough, the provenance of the majority of sub-collections is somewhat known internally, or sub-collections are known to have been created by past UCLA librarians. However, there are a few particular sub-collections, including the sizable Collection of Islamic manuscripts, whose provenance is completely unknown.
Following the workshop, the event resumed with a public symposium featuring five scholars who discussed Arabic-script manuscripts and collections at UCLA and beyond. Nir Shafir (UC San Diego) presented a geological approach to the manuscript record of Middle Eastern societies, with an emphasis on the collection housed at UCLA. Mirroring stratigraphic approaches in geology and archaeology that order earth deposits from the youngest (the surface) to the oldest (the bottom) layer, Shafir analyzed the state of the Islamic manuscripts record through strata: Stratum A – Institutional Collections, 1900-present; Stratum B – Collectors/Booksellers, 1900-1960; Stratum C – Extant libraries from 1700-1900; Stratum D – Non-extant libraries from 1500-1700; Stratum E – Individual books from 1000-1500, accidental archives; and Stratum F – Fragments from 700-1000. According to Shafir, UCLA’s collection contains many materials from Stratum B, acquired from private collectors or booksellers, such as the Tekeş collection (which was formerly the collection of Muḥammad Rashīd al-Ḥawāṣilī) and the Fahri Bilge collection. Shafir noted that many of the manuscripts in UCLA’s collection also belong to Stratum C, collected from extant libraries from 1700-1900.
Nir Shafir (UC San Diego). Photo by CNES.
“Due to the nature of its creation, UCLA’s collection has more of these independent, loosely bound materials. These texts were likely commonplace in the past, but they have now become rare due to how material was preserved in the Islamic manuscript record,” said Shafir.
Garrett Davidson (College of Charleston) continued the event with a presentation on the late-Ottoman private library of Aḥmad Najīb b. Aḥmad Ṭāhir and its dispersal. The library, dating back to the mid to late 19th century and containing some 400 books, was purchased in 1930 by the London-based manuscript dealer A. S. Yahuda, who bought it from Muḥammad Rashīd al-Ḥawāṣilī. Through Yahuda, the library was dispersed across multiple Western libraries, including Princeton, the Chester Beatty, and the National Library of Israel. According to Davidson, Najīb’s collection offers a rare opportunity to study a rather large personal library of a late-Ottoman collector, but also the ability to trace its trajectory to its current repositories because it remained whole until it was dispersed. A recent discovery by Davidson and Rana Mikati revealed that Muḥammad Amīn al-Khānjī, a manuscript dealer, was responsible for the translocation and dispersal of Najīb’s collection. Davidson noted that the contents of the collection offer glimpses into Najīb’s collection patterns (for example, buying during holy months) and collection timeline, but also who Najīb was and the acquisition of the collection by al-Ḥawāṣilī, and, subsequently, by al-Khānjī.
Kathryn Babayan (University of Michigan, left) and Garrett Davidson (College of Charleston, right) examine a manuscript during the workshop. Photo by CNES.
Next, Kathryn Babayan (University of Michigan) presented on the Isfahan Project based at the University of Michigan, which aims to create a digital archive of family anthologies (majmuʿa) produced in the city of Isfahan, Iran. The archive will feature digital copies of hundreds of Persian manuscripts dating from the 17th century that are housed at Tehran University Library, Majlis Library, Malik Library, and the National Library of Iran, thus being largely inaccessible to scholars outside of Iran, especially those from the United States. According to Babayan, anthologies are divided into those compiled for professional purposes and those assembled for personal use. During her presentation, Babayan analyzed several pages from the already-digitized manuscripts, noting their content, organization, and possible provenance. Due to the Iranian provenance of some collections at UCLA, scholars have the opportunity to apply Babayan’s pathbreaking research on family anthologies, modeled in her recent book The City as Anthology: Eroticism and Urbanity in Early Modern Isfahan (Stanford University Press, 2021), to new sources.
Khalilullah Afzali (UCLA) switched the attention back to the Arabic-script manuscript collection housed in UCLA Library by focusing on the Caro O. Minasian collection that UCLA purchased from Minasian in 1968. The purchase was initiated in 1966 by Gustave E. Von Grunebaum, the founding director of the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies, and was finalized thanks to the efforts of Dr. Avedis Sanjian and Dr. Amin Banani. The Minasian collection housed at UCLA contains 6,500 manuscripts and printed books in Arabic, Armenian, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu. Afzali provided an overview of the collection, its existing Persian and Arabic catalogues, subjects of featured manuscripts (such as literature and poetry), the sources from which Minasian acquired the manuscripts, as well as glimpses into Minasian as a collector.
Khalilullah Afzali (UCLA). Photo by CNES.
The event concluded with a presentation by Taha Tuna Kaya (Sivas Cumhuriyet University/UC Davis), who offered insights into UCLA’s Collection of Turkish Manuscripts, which is one of the largest Turkish manuscript collections outside of Türkiye. The collection contains over 2,000 items written between 1400 and 1900, representing different genres, such as divans and treatises, written in Ottoman Turkish in Arabic script. According to Kaya, although the provenance research of these manuscripts remains to be finalized, core materials can be traced to Fahri Bilge, an Ottoman banker and bibliophile, whose personal library was dispersed after his death and part of its contents acquired by UCLA in the 1960s through the efforts of Gustave E. von Grunebaum and the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies. Kaya noted the need for a full and digitized catalogue of this collection, and well as the value of the collection for studying Ottoman intellectual and cultural history.
Taha Tuna Kaya (Sivas Cumhuriyet University/UC Davis) examines a manuscript during the workshop. Photo by CNES.
“Our workshop succeeded in generating a great deal of interest and previously hidden knowledge about how UCLA Library Special Collections came to hold its magnificent collections of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish manuscripts. It has opened a door for researchers to enter and make new discoveries and connections between UCLA’s holdings and other nodes in the vast world network of surviving Islamic manuscripts. We will build energetically on the day’s proceedings as we work to continue cataloging these treasures and encouraging researchers, students, and community members to visit and make their own discoveries,” Yarbrough concluded.