During a two-week research stay in the United Arab Emirates, sponsored by the NYU Abu Dhabi Humanities Research Fellowships, the director of MF L-MaSDR had the opportunity to engage with several pioneering institutions. Dr. Monier explored a range of facilities in both Abu Dhabi and Dubai that are renowned for their innovative approaches to manuscript studies and the digital humanities.

Monier, Mina

Senior Researcher
Mina.Monier@mf.no

Of these places, he had the privilege of visiting the Juma Al Majid Center for Culture and Heritage in Dubai. This center was established by the renowned Emirati philanthropist, Juma al-Majid. A self-made business magnate, Mr. al-Majid established this nonprofit center to preserve endangered human heritage. The center’s activity focuses on the material preservation and digitisation of rare books and manuscripts, recognising no cultural or religious limitations to its scope of interest.

Learn more about Juma AL-Majid Center for Culture and Heritage here

For me, there is no distinction between one book and another; my mission is to save it wherever it is found.

Al-Majid while defining the rationale of the center.

"For me, there is no distinction between one book and another; my mission is to save it wherever it is found," said al-Majid while defining the rationale of the center.

“I was very young when I first saw Mr. al-Majid,” said Monier. “He came to visit our church in Alexandria to fund the restoration of damaged manuscripts in the ancient patriarchal library. He set a wonderful example for my young self on how religious boundaries are overcome by shared human heritage. It was a dream for me to visit the center and to get to know more about its noble mission. Nearly two decades later, this dream was fulfilled.”

Facilities, Collections and Operations

Monier was received by Mr. Anwer Saad, the head of the public relations department, who showed him the activities of the center. “I was stunned by the sheer scale of operations: a complete line of knowledge production, from manufacturing the materials used to restore damaged manuscripts, to digitisation, and even printing large publications and facsimiles.”

Besides the dedicated restoration and digitisation labs, the center houses five stories of archival material, including thousands of manuscripts and tens of thousands of rare books. This includes entire libraries of famous thinkers and writers who donated their collections to the center to be curated.

Mobile Preservation: The Al Majid Restoration Machine

Yet, the most extraordinary activity was their mobile “Al Majid Restoration Machine,” an entire lab ready to be sent anywhere in the world to perform restoration and digitisation in situ, free of charge. Today, their digital repository hosts nearly one million photos of digitised folios, made entirely available for any student or researcher to access freely.

“The UAE’s drive for future advancement in digital humanities and manuscript studies is a formidable force.

Mina Monier

Manuscript Discovery and Scholarly Impact

To give one example, Monier located images of a hitherto unknown witness to the 14th-century encyclopaedia of the Coptic writer Ibn Kabar, a finding he has incorporated into his forthcoming article in the Harvard Theological Review.

“The UAE’s drive for future advancement in digital humanities and manuscript studies is a formidable force,” concluded Monier.