The Significance of Islamic Manuscripts

Abstract

The people (al-ummah) Who were destined to receive the revelation in which the above verses are contained, could not remain unaffected on the human level by either the central significance of the Pen which God takes to witness in the verse cited above, nor by the inexhaustibleness of the treasury of the Words of God. The ummah which created Islamic civilization could not but live by the pen and its fruit in the form of the written word. Nor could it cease to produce a great number of works written primarily in Arabic, secondarily in Persian, and then in nearly all the vernacular languages of the Islamic world ranging from Turkish to Malay and Bengali to Berber. The civilization which received the imprint of the Qurʾānic revelation produced a vast corpus of writings which has probably not been matched in quantity by the literature of any other civilization before the discovery of printing. It also produced a body of writings which contains not only the thought. art, and sentiments of that notable segment of humanity which comprises the Islamic people, but also many of the intellectual and scholarly treasures of The civilizations of antiquity to which Islam became heir and much of whose heritage it preserved in accordance With its function as the last plenar religion of this humanity. Moreover, manuscripts were written by Muslims or minorities living within the Islamic world which contain knowledge of other civilizations and peoples.