Presented by the UCLA Center for Near Eastern Studies with support from UCLA Library, Islamic Studies,UCLA CMRS Center for Early Global Studies, Richard Hovannisian Endowed Chair in Modern Armenian History, Division of the Humanities

UCLA Library holds the second-largest collection of Arabic-script manuscripts in the Americas, including what may be the region's largest collections of Persian and Ottoman Turkish manuscripts. These treasures belong to at least twenty different collections that came to the Library at various times and under different circumstances. The Islamic Manuscript Initiative, held in UCLA Library Special Collections, seeks to expand and enhance access to these materials, with a challenge that the provenance of many of the collections is not well established. 

This event brings together scholars to examine the provenance of these manuscripts and collaboratively examine one of the less well-known collections. The program will begin with an invitation-only research session in the morning, followed by afternoon sessions open to the public. 

Program
1:00 p.m. - Welcome
1:10 p.m. - Nir Shafir (UCSD), "Searching in pamphlets, ephemera, and other fossils in the strata of the Islamic manuscript archive"
1:40 p.m. - Garrett Davidson (College of Charleston), "The Syrian bookseller Rashīd al Hawāṣilī (d. 1952) and the Dispersion of Two Late-Ottoman Libraries"
2:10 p.m. - Kathryn Babayan (University of Michigan), "The Isfahan Archive Project"
2:40 p.m. - Break
2:50 p.m. - Khalil Afzali (UCLA), "Provenance of Arabic-Script Manuscripts in the Caro Minasian Collection"
3:20 p.m. - Taha Tuna Kaya (UC Davis), "Turkish Manuscripts at UCLA: Past, Present, and Future"
3:50 p.m. - 4:00 pm Concluding remarks