Courtesy of Mr Muhammad Hozien, the al-Ghazali website provides a plethora of information, links, and valuable downloads...regarding the works of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī in the first instance (including the entire Itḥāf al-sādah al-muttaqīn bi sharḥ iḥyāʾ ʿulūm al-dīn of Murtaḍa al-Zabīdī), and many other topics. Of the latter, a page devoted to manuscripts and manuscript collections provides a cursory overview of collections to the beginner, as well as downloadable PDF versions of Kashf al-ẓunūn of Kātib Çelebī, al-Aʿlām of Zirklī, Muʿjam al-muʾallifīn of Kaḥḥāla, and the Arabic translations of Brockelmann, Sezgin, and more.

The site is readable in numerous languages, and really is a great online asset to medievalists and students of Arabic.

Also provided by Professor Jan Just Witkam on his site is an online self-study course in Arabic paleography, apparently based upon the course Dr Witkam provides himself at Leiden. The course is meant to assist the student in differentiating between different Arabic scripts, and becoming accustomed to deciphering the the copyist's hand.

The page has 27 examples of various scripts, ranging from Europe's oldest known extant paper book from the 3rd century hegira, to the often-difficult-to-read older naskhī and maghribī scripts.

The professor outlines the following steps to proceeding:

• Read the biographical description of the manuscript (provided on the first page by Dr Witkam).
  
• Compare the image of the manuscript with Dr Witkam's own proposed transliteration. Get accustomed wih the peculiarities of this hand.
  
• Transcribe in the same way a considerable portion of the part of the manuscript which has not been transliterated. Start where the given transliteration ends. See how far you come.
  
• Note remarkable or unusual ligatures and make a list of these.
  
• Make an inventory of all signs and peculiarities which are different from modern practice.
  

Many thanks to Dr Witkam for this invaluable site that he has put together over the past few years, and particularly for this course, which went live online in the fall of 2007.