Resources
Arabic Dictionaries
| Lane’s Arabic-English Lexicon | |
| Lisan al-?Arab |
Persian Dictionaries
| Steingass’ Comprehensive Persian-English Dictionary | |
| Dehkhoda’s Lughat-namah |
Syriac Dictionaries
| Dukhrana Lexicon Search |
Encyclopaedias
| Encyclopaedia Iranica | |
| Danishnamah-yi Jahan-i Islam |
Transliteration tools
| Arabic Scripts Unicode Fonts | |
| Gentium | |
| Charis SIL | |
| TITUS Cyberbit | |
| Jaghbub Unicode |
Desktop layouts
| Mac: | Useful resources to transliterate Arabic with detailed installation instructions can be found on The Arabic Macintosh. | |
|---|---|---|
| PC: | Keyboard layouts can be created and modified using the Microsoft Keyboard Layout Creator. |
On-Line Catalogues
| Fihrist, catalogue of Islamic manuscripts in UK libraries (in development) | |
| Agabozorg, catalogue of Islamic manuscripts in Iranian libraries | |
| Yazma Eser Kütüphaneleri, catalogue of Islamic manuscripts in Turkish libraries | |
| Handschriften Katalog Online | |
| Harvard Islamic Heritage Project |
Digital Libraries
| Alfabetical List of Open Access Islamic Manuscripts Collections | |
| Cambridge Digital Library (includes several examples of Abbasid Qur’ans) | |
| The Minassian Collection of Qur’anic Manuscripts (includes several examples of Abbasid Qur’ans) | |
| Library of the Iranian Parliament (30000 digitised manuscripts) |
Digital Lessons
| Lessons Mouse and Manuscript
Leiden University offers a free online collection of lessons –Mouse and Manuscript-in codicology and palaeography from the Muslim world. The lessons will guide you through the ways books were made and used before the printing press, by investigating the traces left by producers, owners and readers of manuscripts. The lessons are based on the rich Oriental Manuscripts collection of Leiden University Library which holds plenty of reference to Abbasid times, though the classes are not specifically aimed at this period. |
Latest news
Next conference
The Seventeenth Conference of the School of Abbasid Studies will take place at the Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium, July 2026. More details will be posted in due course.
Scopus acknowledgement
The Journal of Abbasid Studies has been accepted for Scopus. The Scopus Content Selection & Advisory Board (CSAB) has reviewed the journal’s application and approved it for coverage. The editors are pleased with the Scopus acknowledgement and hope that the journal’s inclusion in the Scopus database will attract even more excellent work for publication in the Journal of Abbasid Studies.
New publications
Imposer l’ordre. La police dans les villes et les campagnes de l’Iraq abbasside (132-334/750-945)
Eugénie Rébillard