Bahjat al-Albab: A 15th-Century Arabic Manuscript on the Astrolabe

Qatar National Library provides a 3.5 GB high-resolution digital copy of the manuscript 'Bahjat al-Albab fi 'Ilm al-Asturlab' by Ahmad ibn Rajab ibn Ṭanbughā al-Majdī. The manuscript is part of the QNL Heritage Collection and is available under a CC0 1.0 license. The dataset was last updated on June 2, 2026.

Use Cases

• Optical Character Recognition (OCR) training for historical Arabic script based on the high-resolution page images.
• Analysis of the textual and diagrammatic content for studies in the history of astronomy and instrument-making.
• Digital preservation and archival studies using the high-resolution master copy as a benchmark.
• Linguistic analysis of classical Arabic scientific terminology from the manuscript's text.

Strengths

• High-resolution digital master copy suitable for detailed examination.
• Released under a permissive CC0 1.0 public domain license.
• Directly sourced from the Qatar National Library Heritage Collection, providing authoritative provenance.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The description metadata is limited; actual data quality and legibility require manual inspection of the 3.5 GB file.

Provenance

Source

Qatar National Library Heritage Collection (manuscript HC.MS.2016.0087).

Collection Method

Digitization of a physical historical manuscript.

Time Range

Manuscript likely dates to the 15th century (author's lifetime).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-02 07:16:04; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Likely the Middle East/Arab world, given the author and language.