Eastern Christian and Islamic Manuscripts in Minnesota: Handwritten, Microfilm, and Digital

Abstract

Abstract: This article is a brief overview of Eastern Christian and Islamic collections in Minnesota, with a focus on the holdings of the largest such collection, located at the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library (HMML) in Collegeville. Minnesota's manuscripts are largely defined by their digital presence and physical absence, as HMML has amassed the world's largest collection of digital manuscript images while the digitized manuscripts remain in libraries around the world. However, HMML holds a (relatively) small collection of physical manuscripts as well, which is the focus of this survey. The collection includes Islamic manuscripts in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, along with Christian manuscripts in Amharic, Arabic, Armenian, Church Slavonic, Coptic, Geʻez, Georgian, Greek, Russian, and Syriac. Highlights include twenty-one Geʻez magic scrolls, three copies of Muḥammad al-Jazūlī's Arabic prayer book Dalāʼil al-khayrāt , late antique Coptic and Greek texts on papyrus and wood, and a Georgian palimpsest fragment with two Syriac undertexts. The article describes the history of the institution and its manuscript holdings and gives an outline of the collection's contents.