Explore our Arabic Manuscripts on Manchester Digital Collections
10 Feb 2026
Explore items from The John Rylands Library’s Arabic manuscripts collection.
The collection is available online for the first time via our Manchester Digital Collections (MDC) platform.
It includes fully digitised copies of Quranic manuscripts, in particular a 14-volume trilingual mushaf (written copy of the Qur’an, Arabic MSS 760-773), as well as codices containing poetry and animal fables, calligraphy, science, ethics, Arabic Christian works and a curious text relating the (imaginary) disputation between a coffee-drinker and a smoker.
This digital collection is the start of the Arabic manuscripts collection being made available virtually and to all and will be added to as part of the Library’s continuing digitisation and retrospective cataloguing programme. Read Curator Zsófia Buda's blog to learn more.