Thursday, January 20, 2011

John Rylands Library to digitize late medieval Koran

Technology is to enable scholars for the first time to study a complete manuscript of one of the world’s most important and largest Korans. The book’s ornate 88 x 60 x 18 cm pages – the size of a plasma television – are kept at The University of Manchester’s John Rylands Library.

Experts at the John Rylands Library are using digital technology and the internet to reunite the 470 page Rylands Koran of Kansuh al-Ghuri with two missing leaves, discovered in the 1970s at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin.

Up to now, scholars have been unable to study the precious items – thought to be at least 500 years old – because they are too fragile. But now, the reunited digitised resource will be freely available for research, teaching and learning using Turning the Pages technology on a dedicated website.

Click here to read this article from Medievalists.net

See also this news report from the BBC

See also this news report from the Mail Online