Manuscripts highlight contributions of Muslims in all fields seminar told

The Ministry of Culture organised a seminar titled 'The Manuscript in the Time of Globalization', as part of the cultural events accompanying the Ramadan Book Fair. The event was attended by Mohamed Hammam Fikri, Heritage and Rare Book Adviser in the Office of the Cultural Adviser at Qatar Foundation, heritage researcher Abdulaziz al-Bohashem al-Sayed, and Dr Moataz al-Khatib, Professor at Hamad Bin Khalifa University, and moderated by Bilal Faraj al-Suwaidi, Head of Manuscripts Department at Qatar National Library.

Muhammad Hammam Fikri, in his presentation titled 'Digitizing Manuscripts', gave a definition of the manuscript as a pen-writing book, a folder or a document. He indicated that there is a science concerned with the physics of the manuscript, as opposed to the content that scholars address with investigation and study. He reviewed the experience of digitising manuscripts in Qatar National Library. By explaining that digitisation means transferring intellectual content from a manuscript to an electronic format so that this content is stored in the cyberspace. It interacts with the researcher and is conserved as a medium that reflects our heritage He pointed that there are nearly 3mn copies of Arabic manuscripts about 400 scientific topics, to which Muslims have contributed in all fields. Fikri also spoke about the importance of digital manuscripts and their characteristics, such as the possibility of enlarging the manuscript image, or allowing comparison between one page and another, or a copy and another, explaining that digitisation allowed researchers around the world to collect the dispersed manuscripts to make them available to access through the various means of communication.He pointed out that the digital copy can be used by an unlimited number of users without being affected or damaged. He also talked about the processing and restoration of manuscripts before digitisation, and the cataloging of the manuscript, its description physically besides its content. He stressed that digitisation has brought about a scientific revolution in the field of publishing the Arabic content of the manuscript.For his part, Abdulaziz al-Bohashem al-Sayyed dealt with the history, richness and spread of Arabic manuscripts, and the interest of Islam in Arabic manuscripts. He pointed out that there are thousands of Arabic manuscripts in international libraries, especially the first five centuries since the mission of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), which is considered the most glorious period where Muslims excelled in all fields.Dr Moataz al-Khatib addressed the importance of the awareness about heritage, and how the transition from manuscript to printing and research took place during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He noted that this took place through four stages, the first witnessed in the nineteenth century by a group of European orientalists, then the second stage came at the end of the nineteenth century and early twentieth century with a group of Egyptians who were sent on scholarship during the reign of Muhammad Ali Pasha. At that time selections of the Arabic manuscript were published by the Bulaq Press in Egypt as an important contribution to heritage. Then the pioneers of the Renaissance contributed to the publication of some Arabic manuscripts, and the revival of heritage was a general feature of the Renaissance in Egypt, the Levant, Iraq, etc.