The Catalogue was prepared within the framework of the scientific project No. 23-28-01748
“Online database of manuscripts as a research tool: Internet publication and study of the collection of Arabic manuscripts of St Petersburg University Professor Sheikh Muhammad at-Tantawi (1810-1861) from the collection of the Eastern Department of the Gorky Scientific Library of PSt Petersburg University”, supported by the Russian Science Foundation

The practical task of the project was to study and publish online the Arabic manuscripts collection belonged to Professor of St Petersburg University Sheikh Muhammad ‘Ayyad al-Tantawi (1810-1861), which is kept now in the Oriental Department of the Scientific Library of St Petersburg State University. It was a continuation of studying al-Tantawi’s legacy, which had been started by the research team in 2010 with a pilot project supported by Russian Foundation for Basic Research (project № 10-06-00540-а, 2010-2011) resulting in publication of a preliminary offline catalogue of al-Tanrawi’s collection on DVD. In the course of the current project, Sheikh al-Tantawi’s manuscripts collection was thoroughly studied and published in the form of online Catalogue that includes digitalized manuscripts with their detailed descriptions provided with search facilities. Besides Catalogue itself, research articles about al-Tantawi, his collection and related subjects were published on al-Tantawi’s Catalogue website.

The main methodological goal of the project involved determining principles of electronic publication of the Arabic script manuscripts in general, including elaboration of a standard set of parameters to be described in the manuscript description forms, as well as developing software which can be easily installed on any server and could be used for online publication of manuscripts. The developed software was tested in the course of describing and publishing al-Tantawi’s manuscripts collection.

Given a double-sided nature of the undertaking, the concreate tasks accomplished in the course of the project were three-pronged:

1. Methodological. Based on personal experience of the project participants in studying manuscripts and publishing catalogues, and after considering the existing specialized databases/ online catalogues of Muslim manuscript collections in the West and in the Muslim world, a standardized system for publishing Arabic script manuscripts was elaborated, including a general structure of the electronic form for describing manuscript, with formalization of search and sorting attributes.
2. Technical: development of a user-friendly software for online publication of Arabic script manuscripts. It includes
1. A specialized scholarly database for describing and publishing manuscripts (using MySQL and PHP) to be used by bibliographer/codicologist, which generate.
2. An online catalogue of manuscripts containing their detailed descriptions with attached electronic copies of manuscripts in pdf format with page layout and table of contents. The online catalogue is intended for the final user, viz. reader or scholar.
3. A set of advanced Search facilities for searching and retrieving information from both the Catalogue and Database is also provided.
3. Academic tasks related to cataloguing of al-Tantawi’s manuscript collection. It included writing and verification of codicological descriptions, proofreading colophons, adding incipits and explicits, rectifying bibliographic descriptions (viz. verifying identification of texts in manuscripts and personality of their authors), creating authoritative files of personalities and titles of works; input of biographical information about authors; creating thematic and geographical indexes.

Initially, the information about manuscripts had been entered into the Database, then it was uploaded to the Online Catalogue to be used by reader/scholar. The user interface developed for that purpose includes

1. Cards/forms that include manuscript description (a separate card for each individual manuscript; and an entry for the entire collection containing descriptions of all Mss, i.e. an analogue of the printed catalogue); cards/descriptions of personalities (primarily authors) containing biographical information and a list of their major works, accompanied with bibliographic references; descriptions of works (texts) included into manuscripts. All these elements are provided with cross-references;
2. Indexes of authors, other persons (calligraphers, manuscript owners, etc.), titles of works, subject headings, dated manuscripts, places of copying;
3. Selections of manuscripts based on various codicological and/or bibliographic criteria important for historical, philological or codicological studies (e. g., a list of manuscripts containing works written in a certain period, list of illuminated manuscripts, etc.).

Besides, all manuscripts from at-Tantawi’s collection were digitized (scanned). Scans were processed and converted into PDF format, marked up to make them easier to navigate (they are provided with folio numbers and table of content), and uploaded to the database/catalogue.

In the course of work, a total of 196 manuscript descriptions were entered into the Database (including parts of ‘convolutes’, i.e. manuscripts that combine texts of different natures and copied at different times but bound together, which were initially fragments of different manuscripts). The database also contains records of 300 works and more than 300 personalities, of which 175 are authors whose works were included into the manuscripts of al-Tantawi’s collection.

Besides that, in the course of cataloguing the Collection, the personality of its owner Sheikh al-Tantawi has also been studied. Some articles were published on the project website, viz. (1) an article devoted to the biography of Sheikh al-Tantawi, his scholarly and teaching activities; (2) an overview of the composition of al-Tantawi’s Сollection, the content of manuscripts it included, as well as their codicological specifics.