Ambrosiana
APRIL 6: SPECIAL EVENING OPENING
From 18.00 to 19.30 (last admission) entrance to the Pinacoteca and Crypt at the special price of €3.00
06/04/2025-06/04/2025
The Ambrosiana Library, set up by Cardinal Federico Borromeo and solemnly inaugurated on December 8, 1609, is responsible for the conservation of an invaluable heritage made up of many thousands of precious manuscripts. Among the numerous and valuable specimens kept there, a collection that is certainly unique in its kind and in the international panorama of Western conservation libraries is that of Arabic manuscripts.
This special collection has been formed at the Ambrosiana since the foundation of the Library, precisely by specific order of Cardinal Borromeo; the Ambrosiana, in fact, was configured as a place for the study and dissemination of orientalist sciences: ancient Arabic, Muslim and Christian manuscripts, Persian and other oriental languages and scripts were collected there, purchased in Istanbul, Damascus, Baghdad, Jerusalem and Cairo, representing different cultural traditions, from the Turkish-Ottoman to the Iraqi or Egyptian ones. In the ancient oriental collection of the Ambrosiana, the most conspicuous part is made up of Arabic works of Muslim literature, including, for example: the splendid and ancient Koran in oblong format on parchment, in Kufic script from the 8th-9th centuries, with gold miniatures (fig. 1); Also important is the section that includes Christian manuscripts, such as the precious manuscript reporting the translation of the four Gospels, copied at the monastery of St. Anthony in 1280 from a copy made from the original text of the translator Abu l-Farag Hibatallah al-As’ad Ibn al-‘Assal (fig. 2)
Fig.1: ms. & 35 sup., c. 29r, seventh Sura of the Koran, Al-A’raf, whose title is illuminated in gold
Fig.2: ms. C 47 lower, c. 16v: incipit of the Gospel of Matthew
The objective of this project – thanks to the contribution of the Lombardy Region – is precisely to make these masterpieces accessible to users all over the world through the new digital initiative of the Ambrosiana Library: making use of the innovative Nainuwa; DLMS (Digital Library Management System) system created by the company TREVENTUS Mechatronics GmbH of Vienna, which natively integrates the IIIF (International Image Interoperability Framework) standard together with the most recent and advanced AI functions, applied to text recognition (HTR: Handwritten Text Recognition) and manuscript layout and to advanced research on texts and images, it will be possible to extend the search capabilities and accessibility of a digital collection based on a special thematic section composed of digitized Ambrosian Arabic manuscripts.
In this first start-up phase of the project, the following three digital collections will be offered for free online consultation:
• Mss. To ar.: 117 mss. fully digitized equal to approximately 40,000 high resolution images;
• Mss. B ar.: 133 mss. fully digitized equal to approximately 51200 high resolution images;
• Traini scientific catalog (figs. 3-6): 4 vols. fully digitized with OCR
(we thank the publishing houses Neri Pozza and Silvana Editoriale for granting permission for online consultation of the four volumes of the Catalog for scientific purposes).
Figs. 3-6: Traini catalogue, title pages of the vols. 1, 2, 3, 4
From 18.00 to 19.30 (last admission) entrance to the Pinacoteca and Crypt at the special price of €3.00
