Editorials Stories
HMML Stories — Editorials
Curators and catalogers examine how specific themes appear across HMML’s collections.
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Metaphorical Meteorology, or: When a Sunny Day Offers More Than Sunshine
“In describing printed books, a cataloger looks for subjects or areas of study where...”
- Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman
An Excerpt on the Properties of April’s Rain in a Curious Collection of Arabic Texts Found in One Manuscript
“The term “April showers” derives from the frequency of short and regular showers that are...”
- Dr. Celeste Gianni
Eclipses in Early Muslim History — Between Myth and Reality
“The best-known eclipse mentioned in Muslim sources was the solar eclipse that occurred on...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor
Remembering an Earthquake
“Many of the regions where HMML has worked are no stranger to earthquakes...”
- Dr. Josh Mugler
The Frozen Tigris and Other Remarkable Weather Events Described in Syriac Colophons
“In the days before social media, how did people share a noteworthy weather phenomena...”
- Dr. James Walters
Space Adventure: A Maltese Musical Fantasy for Children
“With their 1962 children’s musical Space Adventure...”
- Dr. Daniel K. Gullo
The Legacy of Mūrisṭus’ Hydraulic and Pneumatic Pipe Organs in the Early 20th-Century Arabic Literary Culture
“The organ is not the first musical instrument that comes to mind when...”
- Dr. Celeste Gianni
Visualizing the Audible: Depictions of Music in a Medieval German Manuscript
“Although music is an aural and tactile experience, human beings also have a...”
- Dr. Jennifer Carnell
I Know It When I See It (I Think…)
“I’m not a musicologist, but I am an avid fan of music from all times...”
- Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman
Deadly snakes and remedies against their venomous bites in the handy charts of a copy of the “Kitāb al-diryāq” (Book on antidotes)
“The Arabic manuscript tradition is rich in medical works discussing remedies and...”
- Dr. Celeste Gianni
Monastic Sisters on Their Deathbed: A Time to Remember
“The book of vows contained one manuscript...”
- Dr. Vevian Zaki
Instructions for Burial: The Last Will and Testament of Ephrem the Syrian
“Ephrem is perhaps the most widely known of all Syriac authors...”
- Dr. James Walters
Monuments to the Dead
“Grief, loss, and death itself were very much part of...”
- Katherine Goertz
Impressions of a Death Foretold: the Execution of Fra Sylvain de Bosredon
“In the days before they were going to kill him, Fra Sylvain de Bosredon woke up early in the morning to the dull sound of...”
- Dr. Daniel K. Gullo
Treatises of Consolation: Muslim Scholars Comfort Themselves and Others Who Have Lost Children
“The Black Death pandemic of the 14th century dramatically reshaped many cultures...”
- Dr. Josh Mugler
Gone, but not Forgotten: the Office for the Dead in Books of Hours
“A choir of cowled monks around a shrouded casket, a body being laid into a coffin, a smiling skeletal figure, an old man sitting on a dung heap...”
- Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman
Khalīl Janāwī: Scribe, Collector, and Artist from al-Mīdān of Damascus
“Khalīl ibn Jirjis Janāwī was a scribe, a collector of manuscripts, and an artist who was...”
- Dr. Vevian Zaki
A Scribble of Scribes: Men, Women, and Children Copyists Across Mali’s Manuscript Collections
“...each manuscript is an artistic production and requires physical labor performed by a single individual—the scribe...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor
Build a Church, Build a Library
“If you want to establish a new church, you’re likely going to need some books...”
- Dr. Josh Mugler
Tracing Scribal Genealogies in Syriac Manuscripts: The Naṣro Family
“The act of hand-copying a manuscript requires specialized skills that...”
- Dr. James Walters
Muḥammad Ṣādiq: A Scribe Between Manuscript and Print Cultures at the Beginning of the 20th Century
“A great opportunity to look at the interaction between manuscript and print cultures can be found in the Middle East...”
- Dr. Celeste Gianni
The Calligrapher Clément Perret
“In the mid-15th century, the invention of the printing press made books relatively easier to produce and...”
- Katherine Goertz
Learning to Write: Practical Aspects of Handwriting
“In 1492, the abbot of a Benedictine monastery in Sponheim, Germany, wrote a small paean to scribes and the act of writing...”
- Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman
Why so Many Fragments? Incomplete Manuscripts in the Timbuktu Collections.
“A large amount of the manuscripts digitized in Timbuktu, Mali, that we at HMML have cataloged are fragments...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor
Woodcut Fragments of the 16th Century
“HMML’s Art & Photographs collection is full of fragments of the 15th and 16th century...”
- Katherine Goertz
Johann Wetzstein and the Qurʼan Fragments of Tübingen
“Johann Gottfried Wetzstein served as honorary Prussian consul in Damascus, Syria, from 1849 to 1861...”
- Dr. Josh Mugler
Medieval Fragments in the Palazzo Falson
“When I arrived at the Palazzo Falson in Mdina, Malta...”
- Dr. Daniel K. Gullo
Identifying Syriac Fragments in the Digital Age
“What would you do if someone handed you a page that had clearly been torn out of a book...”
- Dr. James Walters
Poetic fragments at the Great ʿUmarī Mosque in Gaza
“The Great ʿUmarī Mosque in Gaza is the largest and oldest mosque in the Gaza Strip...”
- Dr. Celeste Gianni
Hiding in the Binding — Fragments in Rare Book Collections at HMML
“Much of human history remains for us today only in the form of smaller remnants or fragments...”
- Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman
Identifying Prohibited Books in Early Modern Malta
“Pope Paul IV (1476–1559) issued the Index Auctorum et Librorum Prohibitorum in 1559 to publicly identify books the...”
- Dr. Daniel K. Gullo
“This Book is Free From Banned Content” — Ottoman Censorship of al-Yāzijī’s Arabic Lexicon
“The Lebanese poet, journalist, and linguist Ibrāhīm al-Yāzijī (1847–1906) has gained fame as a...”
- Dr. Vevian Zaki
Ḫeruy Walda Śellāsē’s “History of Ethiopia”
“Printing reached Ethiopia rather late. In Europe, texts were occasionally printed in Ethiopic characters from...”
- Ted Erho
Censorship Without Censorship
“Maḥmūd ibn ʻUmar al-Zamakhsharī did not have an easy childhood. He was born in 1075 CE into a...”
- Dr. Josh Mugler
A Book You Would Love to Read...
“A book you would love to read is lost, altered, destroyed, buried, hidden, left unpublished, unwritten, banned.”
- Dr. Catherine Walsh and Margaret Bresnahan
Sandwiching a Forbidden Text
“The advent of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century led to...”
- Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman
Books that Survived the Ban — Syriac Manuscripts in India
“Christianity has a long, rich history in India. Some even trace the origins of Christian communities in India to...”
- Dr. James Walters
Lifted on Wings
“Angels occupy an important place in monotheistic religions. They are mainly presented as celestial beings...”
- Sister Marie-Thérèse Elia
Feeling the Heavens
“In summer of 1917, the New York-based artist Rockwell Kent made a bold decision.”
- Dr. Catherine Walsh
Khwājahʹzādah’s Treatise on the Rainbow
“Rainbows are optical illusions caused by the reflection, refraction, and...”
- Dr. Celeste Gianni
The Stars of Ben-Zion
“Born Ben-Zion Weinman in Starokostiantyniv, Ben-Zion came to New York City in...”
- Katherine Goertz
Between the Sun and Moon
“Today, depending on what communities you are a part of, your concept of a year may follow a calendar that is...”
- Ted Erho
Signs in the Heavens — Astrological Books of Daniel in Eastern Christianity
“In Syriac Christian communities, astrological texts were sometimes appended to medical books and...”
- Dr. David Calabro
A Tale of Two Bears — Astronomy in Austrian Libraries
“When I was a boy, the night sky always fascinated me—stars, moon, planets, nebulae, comets, and...”
- Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman
Why was Esau so Hungry? Genesis 25 in Arabic Manuscripts
“Among the well-known biblical narratives is that of the twins Jacob and Esau, and...”
- Dr. Vevian Zaki
Smoking in the Desert — Between Supporters and Opponents of Tobacco
“The use of tobacco in the Sahel, whether smoking, chewing, or taking as snuff, was widespread and...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor
The Hard Work of a Market Inspector in Preventing Food Frauds at the Market of Tinnīs, Egypt
“There are several manuals in the Arabic literary tradition describing the profession of the...”
- Dr. Celeste Gianni
The Gouda Life
“Between 1585 to 1600 Maarten de Vos designed 141 engravings depicting hermits.”
- Katherine Goertz
A Syriac Poem on Wine
“Who doesn’t love a good glass of wine? White, red, or something in between, authors throughout history...”
- Dr. James Walters
A Man for All Seasonings
“It was the late 14th century, and Shīrāz was the city of poets.”
- Dr. Josh Mugler
The Case of the Mysterious Pie and the Amsterdam Theater
“Pie. Today, for many, this tasty baked good with its short, flaky crust suggests associations of...”
- Dr. Catherine Walsh
Arabian Nights of the Christian East
“On a shelf in the Syriac Orthodox Church of Saint George in Aleppo is a manuscript copied in Arabic Garshuni...”
- Dr. David Calabro
The Story of the Talking Camel and the Exploits of Ali Genre in West Africa
“While some elements of the story are fiction, others are clearly inspired by real events in Khaybar.”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor
Parabiblical Literature in the Horn of Africa
“Biblical narratives often leave the audience wanting to know a bit more.”
- Ted Erho
Tracing Folktales in Magic Texts — The Story of Umm al-Ṣibyān
“Despite having been contested in Islamic history by powerful groups rejecting them as illegitimate practices, magic and...”
- Dr. Celeste Gianni
Grave Tales, Engraved (and Etched)
“While many artists have provided illustrations for books, some works in the Art & Photographs collection at HMML were inspired by stories...”
- Katherine Goertz
Ottoman Soap Operas and Other Stories
“HMML’s digital collections include entertaining stories from a wide range of linguistic and...”
- Dr. Josh Mugler
The Book of Laughable Stories — A Medieval Joke Book
“Have you ever heard a great joke, but then later when you tried to recount it for someone else, you couldn’t remember it?”
- Dr. James Walters
Malta Envisioned by an English Clergyman
“The highlights of the island included the harbor of Valletta, an elaborate and protective harbor famous for...”
- Dr. Catherine Walsh
Travelers and Texts Crossing the Sahara
“Mobility was a central feature of individuals, societies, and texts within Muslim West Africa’s...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor
When in Rome...
“Rome has long been a destination for travelers from around the world.”
- Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman
Protecting Travelers and Maritime Contacts in the Eighteenth-Century Mediterranean
“The great Age of Sail conjures in our minds vast stretches of ocean populated by...”
- Dr. Daniel K. Gullo
Traveling to France on Paper
“In the mid-19th century, a group of French artists began to reevaluate the art of...”
- Katherine Goertz
Crossing the Red Sea in the 1640s
“In September 1647 CE, al-Ḥasan al-Ḥaymī left the port of al-Mukhā (Mocha) in...”
- Dr. Josh Mugler
Quarantine in Malta, a Print of the Lazaretto from the Mużew Nazzjonali tal-Arti
“The increased activity of Malta’s ports after the Aragonese conquest in 1283 led to a...”
- Cláudia Garradas
Medical Texts From Timbuktu — Local Pharmacological Remedies with Qur’anic Verses
“In West Africa knowledge of the Qur’an was often combined with local pharmacological traditions to...”
- Dr. Ali Diakite and Dr. Paul Naylor
An Anonymous Syriac Medical Compendium
“Many medical works from antiquity were translated into Syriac and transmitted through the...”
- Dr. James Walters
A Tale of Two Herbals, From Medicine to Food in the 16th Century
“Herbals—books describing the medicinal use of plants—have been important scientific sources for...”
- Dr. Matthew Z. Heintzelman
Accounts on Plague and Infectious Diseases from Three Arabic Manuscripts
“The disastrous impact of plague epidemics in the Middle East has been documented in numerous accounts...”
- Dr. Celeste Gianni
Remedies in the Margins of Syriac Manuscripts
“People in past centuries would sometimes use the blank flyleaves and margins of manuscripts to...”
- Dr. David Calabro
Medical Care for the Enslaved Mustafa Osmon in 18th-Century Valletta, Malta
“The Archivum de Piro in Valletta, Malta preserves a small invoice and...”
- Dr. Daniel K. Gullo