A multidisciplinary approach to valorising ancient manuscripts

This work responds to the objective of recovering, preserving and valorising ancient documents, with particular reference to those in Arabic, both manuscripts and small objects with Arabic inscriptions of significant historical-cultural interest, preserved in libraries and historical archives. The proposed approach aims to scientifically analyse both the form and content of the selected material in order to provide input for its conservation, digitisation, archiving, annotation and large-scale exploitation. To this end, the most advanced diagnostic and digital technologies will be adopted, integrated and tested with the aim of valorising and translating the uniqueness of the material objects into a format suitable for management and manipulation in innovative digital environments, while preserving all their complexity as objects of scientific analysis in the field of historical-cultural studies. The study presented here concerns the preliminary analysis of a copy of sacred texts in Arabic, Ms 566, dating from around the 15th century and currently held at the Biblioteca Nazionale of Pisa. The manuscript was chosen because it is representative of the material typology, state of preservation and content of the ancient manuscript, epigraphic and book heritage of the Arab world.