Introduction.
Private and public collections of Ibadi manuscripts have been the object of study for historians and specialists in Islam for well over a century. Today, most Ibadi manuscript collections remain in private libraries, ranging from a couple of volumes in someone’s house to thousands of texts in an organized, privately-owned library. Many of these collections have been cataloged and inventoried and those interested in studies of collections and catalogues can consult Martin Custers’ Al-Ibāḍiyya: A Bibliography (2nd. ed., 2016).
My own research has dealt primarily with family collections on the island of Jerba (Tunisia). I am likewise interested in collections that have been lost, damaged, or dispersed to European or North American libraries. On this page, I will be adding information on the libraries or collections I have researched or on which I am currently working.
Library Catalogs & Inventories.
These inventories and catalogs have come out of my fieldwork with Ibadi collections in northern Africa and Europe. They consist of both formal publications in academic journals and online-only publications of manuscript collections. The distinction here between ‘inventory’ and ‘catalog’ is that the former refers only to titles in a collection, whereas the latter refers to both inventories and codicological descriptions of manuscripts. When possible, I have also included an additional catalog of watermarks.
[2] Inventory of Ibadi titles in the Dār al-Kutub al-Miṣriyya (Cairo, Egypt) [New, added 2020]
[3] Catalog of Ibadi and other Maghribi Arabic MSS at the Ivan Franko National University in Lviv, Ukraine [in progress]
Non-Ibadi Collections
[1] The “Ifrane Collection” (A private manuscript collection in Ifrane, Morocco).
Ibadi Studies | دراسات إباضية 