A catalogue across libraries
FIHRIST is a union catalogue for manuscripts in Arabic script. Birmingham’s institutional introduction explains its role in bringing searchable descriptions from major United Kingdom collections together. The common interface allows a reader to look beyond the boundaries of a single holding library.
Arabic script is the relevant organizing description. It does not mean that every work is in Arabic, that every manuscript is a legal work or that every item has the same religious setting. A search result needs its own language, subject and physical description before it can enter a legal-historical argument.
The work and the volume
A catalogue can describe a work within a volume as well as the volume itself. That distinction is important when a manuscript contains several texts. An argument about one work should identify its location within the physical object rather than silently transfer the volume’s description to every component.
Dates can also attach to different things. A catalogue may identify a copy, an attributed composition or a later addition. When the entry preserves uncertainty, retain that wording in the research note. Converting a qualified attribution into an exact statement can make the eventual article look precise while actually removing information supplied by the catalogue.
Following the holding institution
A union record is a finding aid and a bridge to the institution responsible for the object. Image availability, reading-room access and reproduction terms may need to be checked there. The catalogue’s usefulness does not depend on all of those services being provided in one place.
For legal historians, the result is a way to build a corpus from identified objects rather than from a familiar title alone. Search across spellings and attributions, inspect the individual descriptions and record the shelfmarks. A comparison that begins this way can accommodate multiple copies, different languages and composite volumes without reducing them to interchangeable examples of an Arabic-script manuscript.
References
- Birmingham: FIHRIST manuscript union catalogue
Institutional description of the searchable catalogue for manuscript collections in Arabic script.
- FIHRIST
Search manuscript descriptions across participating collections; consult the holding library's record for access.
Filed under Manuscripts & history. Sources and corrections.