Tafsir al-Baydawi: A High-Resolution Digital Manuscript from Qatar National Library

A 7.0 GB high-resolution digital copy of manuscript HC.MS.00235 from the Qatar National Library Heritage Collection. The manuscript contains 'Anwar al-Tanzil wa Asrar al-Ta'wil', a classical Quranic commentary known as Tafsir al-Baydawi, authored by Abdullah ibn Umar al-Baydawi (d. 1286). The dataset was published by Qatar National Library and last updated on June 3, 2026.

Use Cases

• Optical Character Recognition (OCR) training for classical Arabic script based on high-resolution manuscript images.
• Digital preservation and analysis of historical Islamic manuscripts.
• Linguistic and stylistic analysis of classical Quranic exegesis (tafsir) texts.
• Training models for layout analysis and page segmentation of historical documents.

Strengths

• High-resolution digital master copy suitable for detailed visual analysis.
• Manuscript is from a known heritage collection (QNL) with a specific catalog record (HC.MS.00235).
• Released under a permissive CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication license.

Limitations

• Description metadata is limited; actual data quality requires manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• The dataset's 7.0 GB size may require significant storage and bandwidth.

Provenance

Source

Qatar National Library Heritage Collection, manuscript HC.MS.00235.

Collection Method

Digitization of a physical manuscript.

Time Range

Manuscript content dates to the 13th century (author died 1286).

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-03 09:29:03; freshness should be verified.