51吃瓜网

Heritage

The Islamic Studies Library was founded, along with the Institute of Islamic Studies, by Prof. Wilfred Cantwell Smith in 1952. The Islamic Studies Library and the Institute have occupied several campus locations, but since 1983 have been situated in Morrice Hall, the former Presbyterian College of Montreal. This research library is intended to be of primary interest to post-graduate students and faculty.

The Islamic Studies Library holds over 140,000 volumes of monographs and nearly 1,000 serial titles covering the whole of Islamic civilization. Its rare collection includes early printed books, dating from the 16th-19th centuries, among which sixteen incunabula published by the famous Turkish printer Ibrahim M眉teferrika, and a sizeable number of Egyptian imprints from Bulaq Press. It also holds a collection of approximately 800 lithographed books printed in the 19th century in Morocco, Egypt, Turkey, Iran, and India.

The manuscript collection consists of texts in Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, Persian, and Urdu. Although modest in size (approximately 650 codices), this collection is rich in textual and visual content. In addition to the handwritten codices, the ISL owns a valuable collection of 200 calligraphy panels, leaves and fragments produced between the 8th and the 20th century.

These works are located in Rare Books and Special Collections.