Rare medical, astronomical manuscripts found at Dar al-Kotob

Egypt State Information Service ^ | Sunday, September 16, 2007 | unattributed

[SunkenCiv]

A number of rare and invaluable medical and astronomical manuscripts have been found at the National Library of Egypt (also known as Dar al-Kotob).

A senior official at Alexandria Library said Saturday that the ancient documents were just laying there in the forgotten Dar al-Kotob archieves for many years but thanks to his Centre for Documentation of Cultural and Natural Heritage (CULTNAT) they were "technically rediscovered".

"They are really priceless," he reiterated. The medical papers give prescription of the treatment of some chronic diseases, bone fractures and bruises and lessons in body and eye anatomy, CULTNAT chief Fathi Saleh said.

The other manuscripts that are of the possessions of the al-Azhar Library are about astronomy and time measurement and they date back to the golden years of the ancient Arab and Islamic civilizations, he said.

Saleh said CULTNAT has already started implementing an integrated project to establish the first expanded and encyclopedic e-library to register the rare collection of manuscripts at the Dar al-Kotob - dating back to the Mameluke era.

[SunkenCiv]

President Hosni Mubarak inaugurated on Sunday the Egyptian Book Library "Dar Al-Kotob" after 6-year long development process cost about LE 85 million mostly raised from Egyptian and Arab donations. Minister of Culture Farouk Hosni told President and Mrs. Mubarak that the time-honored Library contains about 100 million documents, 110,000 manuscripts, 5000 old maps and 10,000 papyruses. Meantime, Minister Farouk Hosni accentuated Mrs Mubarak's efforts to renovate Dar Al-Kotob's old building in Bab Al-Khalq and for protecting the country's cultural heritage.

[SunkenCiv]

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[Monkey Face]

*ahem*

Nothing there but a red x...

[SunkenCiv]

It’s Mubarek’s face, or rather is supposed to be. I think it is some kind of bandwidth protection.

Unless there has been a coup in the past few minutes... always a possibility...

;’)

[Monkey Face]

Eh. I’d rather have the red x. ;o]

[BJClinton]

Man I wish these were available online.

[Jedi Master Pikachu]

Africa pinglist ping.

[SunkenCiv]

It’s not clear from the article (and I found three or four word-for-word identical sources, nothing else about it) but I believe that the documents are not ancient, merely medieval, i.e., Islamic in origin.

[SunkenCiv]

Click the red X to see his smiling visage.

[SunkenCiv]

Thanks JMP. RTS.

[Fred Nerks]

...and they date back to the golden years of the ancient Arab and Islamic civilizations, he said.

...when the arabs were slaughtering the indigenous peoples and stealing everything that belonged to them...just as they are doing now in Africa and plan to do to the rest of the world?

That golden age?

[SunkenCiv]

It’s golden if one happens to be smoking some gold...