Al-Muqaddimah Al-Fiqhiyyah: A 15th Century Islamic Law Manuscript

A high-resolution digital master copy of manuscript HC.MS.00655 from the Qatar National Library Heritage Collection. The manuscript, titled 'Al-Muqaddimah Al-Fiqhiyyah', was authored by Abu Al-Qasim bin Abi Bakr Al-Samarqandi, who was active in the 15th century. The dataset was last updated on May 17, 2026.

Use Cases

• Train Optical Character Recognition (OCR) models for classical Arabic script based on high-resolution manuscript images.
• Analyze the structure and content of a foundational Islamic legal text for historical research.
• Benchmark digital restoration techniques for historical documents using the high-resolution master copy.
• Study the paleographic features of 15th-century Arabic manuscripts from the Samarkand region.

Strengths

• High-resolution digital master copy ensures fine detail is preserved for analysis.
• Directly sourced from the Qatar National Library Heritage Collection, providing authoritative provenance.
• Released under a CC0 1.0 Public Domain Dedication license, allowing for unrestricted use.

Limitations

• The dataset description lacks column-level metadata, making the internal structure of the ZIP file unknown.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for large-scale computational tasks.
• The 1.2 GB size suggests a substantial image collection, but the exact number of pages or files is unspecified.

Provenance

Source

Qatar National Library Heritage Collection, manuscript HC.MS.00655.

Collection Method

Digitization of a physical manuscript.

Time Range

Manuscript authored in the 15th century.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-05-17 09:01:28; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Likely associated with the Samarkand region; held in Qatar.