“Taught by the Pen: The World of Islamic Manuscripts” is at Beinecke Library through August 10
“Taught by the Pen: The World of Islamic Manuscripts”—an exhibition of nearly 150 manuscripts and materials from the 9th to 20th centuries—is on view through Aug. 10 at Beinecke Library.
Among the elaborately illuminated and illustrated manuscripts are a leaf from a 9th-century Qur’an, a mid-16th-century copy of a Persian romantic epic poem by Nizami of Ganjavi, and various everyday objects, including prayer books, legal documents, maps, and a set of playing cards.
The exhibition also features a letter written in Arabic in 1819 by Omar ibn Said, a Muslim scholar who was enslaved in West Africa and enslaved again after his escape to North Carolina. Ibn Said wrote in Arabic—exceptional because enslaved people were believed to be illiterate. Arabic was not Ibn Said’s native language. He had been educated in Arabic in his home country in order to read the Qur’an and practice his religion.
The three curators—Roberta Dougherty, librarian for Middle East studies; Özgen Felek, lector of Ottoman in Yale’s Department of Near Eastern Languages Civilizations; and Special Collections curator Agnieszka Rec—organized the exhibition around subjects of interest to classical Muslim scholarship: the Qur’an, faith, philosophy, science and medicine, descriptions of the world, history, the art of the book, and everyday life. Each curator brought her unique perspective and expertise to the process.
The select objects on display are from Yale Library’s collection of nearly 5,300 items created in the Islamic world—one of the oldest and largest such collections in the United States. Also on view are three science manuscripts from Cushing/Whitney Medical Historical Library and an astrolabe from Yale Peabody Museum.
Read Mike Cumming’s article about the exhibition “Taught by the Pen” in Yale News.
Read more in Yale Library News about Omar ibn Said and the Pulitzer Prize–winning opera based on his writings and his life. The stage design featured a reproduction of the ambrotype portrait of Ibn Said that is in Yale Library’s collection and images from the letter in the exhibition, also shown in the series of photos above. Printed and digital English-language translations of Said’s autobiography are also in Yale Library’s collection.
Watch a Mondays at Beinecke YouTube video of Dougherty discussing Omar ibn Said and related objects in the library’s collection and in other repositories.
—Deborah Cannarella
Images: “Dala’il al-khayrat” (Guide to blessings). In Arabic. Manuscript on paper. Copies in 1878; Abu al-Fazl ibn Mubarak (d. 1602), author. “Mukatabat-I ‘Allami” (Correspondence with princes and family members). In Persian. Rafi‘ ibn Muhammad Riza, scribe. Manuscript on paper. Copies in Isfahan, Iran, 1661; Kelimāt-ı Türkiyye (Turkish vocabulary). In Turkish and English. Tomas Dowson, commissioner Manuscript on paper. Copied in 1694; Omar ibn Said (d. 1863), author. “Letter to John Owen in Raleigh.” In Arabic. Manuscript on paper. Copies in North Carolina, ca. 1819.
