Kitab al-Miftah wa-Irtiyah al-Arwah: A 15th-Century Arabic Manuscript

A 3.5 GB high-resolution digital master copy of manuscript HC.MS.2016.0030 from the Qatar National Library Heritage Collection. The manuscript is titled 'Kitab al-Miftah wa-Irtiyah al-Arwah' and is attributed to the author Muhammad ibn Sa'dun ibn Ali al-Qayrawani, who died in 1092. The dataset was published by Qatar National Library under a CC0 1.0 license and last updated on June 2, 2026.

Use Cases

• Train optical character recognition (OCR) models for historical Arabic script based on high-resolution manuscript images.
• Analyze the layout and structure of pre-modern Arabic manuscripts for digital humanities research.
• Conduct textual analysis on classical Arabic works from the 11th century.
• Develop image processing techniques for the restoration and enhancement of digitized cultural heritage materials.

Strengths

• High-resolution digital master copy, which likely preserves fine details of the manuscript.
• Clear provenance from the Qatar National Library Heritage Collection, a known institution.
• Released under a permissive CC0 1.0 public domain dedication.

Limitations

• The description metadata is limited; actual data quality and content require manual inspection after download.
• Column-level documentation is absent; the specific structure of the ZIP file's contents is unknown.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment for certain ML tasks.

Provenance

Source

Qatar National Library Heritage Collection (manuscript HC.MS.2016.0030).

Collection Method

Digitization of a physical manuscript to create a high-resolution digital master copy.

Time Range

The original manuscript is from 1461; the author died in 1092.

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-02 07:30:01; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Likely associated with the Arab world, given the author's name (al-Qayrawani) and the language.