The "Quduri Manuscripts" database has been updated to a wider "Hanafi Scholars" database. All that was in the previous database still remains, but I have now included more biographies of scholars historically preceding and following al-Qudūrī.

Again, most manuscript information has been gathered primarily for the works of al-Qudūrī himself, and those works based upon his works. The list of works authored by any of the mentioned scholars is not currently exhaustive in the least.

With time, over the coming months and years, I hope to continue to add information to the entries of the currently 115 Hanafi authors currently in the database, and to continue to add more biographical, bibliographical, and manuscript-related entries as my research continues. Nonetheless, I believe that even in its current form, it might prove useful insofar as it collect this information in English and in one place.

This database will also form the basis of the upcoming updates to the Hanafi scholars timeline, and a map of Hanafi teacher:student chains of transmission which I am developing.

وما توفيقي إلا بالله

The page "Manuscripts of Quduri commentaries" contains a FileMaker database which aims to contain (1) all the titles of works by al-Qudūrī; (2) all the works related to his works, whether commentaries, glosses, or otherwise; (3) for each work mentioned, instances of extant manuscripts or printed editions of that work.

Note, however, that while the database aims to exhaustively list every title written by Qudūrī or related to his works, the database does not aim nor claim to exhaustively list every extant manuscript thereof. The only titles for which I have entered every known manuscript that I have come across are: (1) al-Qudūri, al-Taqrīb; (2) al-Qudūrī, Sharḥ Mukhtaṣar al-Karkhī; (3) al-Qudūrī, Ḥadīth, aw Juzʾ; (4) al-Qudūrī, Nabdha min Manāqib Abī Ḥanīfa; and (5) al-Aqṭaʿ, Sharḥ Mukhtaṣar al-Qudūrī.

The other works do have many manuscript entries, nonetheless; however, I have largely entered those manuscripts which I found outside of Sezgin and Brockelmann, such as in Ḥabshī's Jāmiʿ al-Shurūḥ wa'l-Ḥawāshī, on http://yazmalar.gov.tr, and other such sources which I may not remember in the future. As for those manuscripts listed in Sezgin and Brockelmann: well, simply look them up there. View this database as a supplement to these two common reference works.

If you come across any works or manuscripts which I do not list here, and that are not simply mentioned in Brockelmann or Sezgin, please drop me a note or leave a comment below, and I will include them.

The Journal of the Middle East Librarians Association provides a "Guide to Using Carl Brockelmann's Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur" in their 1974 MELA Notes 3.

As a further supplementary aid, I have visually rendered much of the information regarding the layout of the GAS provided by the guide into a chart, which may be downloaded as PDF here.

I will soon update the PDF to include a second page with a list of the abbreviations provided by Brockelmann (currently, the PDF just gives the page numbers provided by Richard Cooper, the author of the MELA notes above). Arranged in booklet form, the PDF may then be printed, folded in half, and used as a quick key to the GAS.

The following is a list of (largely English) studies on the history of the medieval madrasa as an institution. This post and the list it contains are a work-in-progress, since undoubtedly I will come across works that I was ignorant of (especially in German and other European languages, which I haven't even touched here), and new books and articles may be published. If anyone knows of other works that should be added to the list, please leave a comment below, or send me an email. Read More...

A new collection on paleography has been published (co-edited by a professor of mine, Dr Judith Pfeiffer), entitled Theoretical Approaches to the Transmission and Edition of Oriental Manuscripts. The work itself seems most helpful, and also contains an excellent bibliography for people just beginning in the field.

The following footnote in one chapter also provides a title for those interested in the history of publishing of Arabic works:

On the foundation of presses in Egypt, see al-Tanahi, Mahmud Muhammad 1984: Madkhal ilā tārīkh nashr al-turāth al-ʿarabī, Cairo, 31-58. The Book also contains short sections on most other countries of the Arab world. The famous press at Bulaq in Cairo began to print in Arabic characters in 1821, but did not begin publishing books until 1872 (p. 32). The press in Beirut began to publish earlier, in 1834 (The American Press) and 1854 (The Catholic Press) (p. 29).

-- Wadad al-Qadi, "How 'Sacred' is the Text of an Arabic Medieval Manuscript?: The Complex Choices of the Editor-Scholar", in Theoretical Approaches to the Transmission and Edition of Oriental Manuscripts. Eds. Judith Pfeiffer and Manfred Kropp. Würzburg: Ergon Verlag, 2007, pp. 13-53, ff.