QNL Manuscript HC.MS.00035: A 13th-Century Treatise on the Astrolabe

Qatar National Library provides a high-resolution digital master copy of manuscript HC.MS.00035 from its Heritage Collection. The manuscript is titled 'Tadhkirat Dhawi al-Albab wa Rasmiha al-'Amal bi al-Asturlab' and was authored by Abu Ja'far Ahmad ibn Ibrahim ibn al-Zubayr between 1229 and 1308. The 2.2 GB ZIP file contains the digitized pages of this historical astronomical text.

Use Cases

• Training Optical Character Recognition (OCR) models on historical Arabic script based on the high-resolution images.
• Analyzing the evolution of astronomical instrument diagrams based on the manuscript's illustrations.
• Studying the transmission of scientific knowledge in the medieval Islamic world based on the treatise's content.
• Creating digital scholarly editions of historical texts based on the digitized manuscript pages.

Strengths

• High-resolution digital master copy suitable for detailed analysis.
• Clear provenance from the Qatar National Library Heritage Collection.
• Released under a permissive CC0 1.0 public domain dedication license.
• File size of 2.2 GB suggests detailed image quality.

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 requires manual inspection after download.

Provenance

Source

Qatar National Library Heritage Collection, manuscript HC.MS.00035.

Collection Method

Digitization of a physical manuscript.

Time Range

Manuscript authored between 1229 and 1308.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-04 10:46:02; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Likely the Middle East, given the author and language.