AUC Library Acquires Rare Archive in Collaboration with U.S. Institutions
AUC’s Libraries and Learning Technologies is collaborating with five leading U.S. academic institutions — Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, New York University, University of Michigan and College of Charleston — for the acquisition of the historical Maktabat al-Khanji Archive. The AUC Library will digitize materials from the archive while preserving the original collection in the University’s Rare Books and Special Collections Library.
“AUC is ideally placed to house, curate, conserve, archive and digitize the collection in its library,” said Lamia Eid ’88, ’92, dean of Libraries and Learning Technologies at AUC. “Our collaboration with the five U.S. institutions, each bringing its own unique policies and procedures, has been both a testament to our shared conviction and profound understanding of the significance of this unique collection.”
“AUC is ideally placed to house, curate, conserve, archive and digitize the collection in its library.”
Belonging to one of the leading manuscript collectors, editors and publishers of Arabo-Islamic literature in the 19th and 20th centuries, Muhammad Amin al-Khanji, Maktabat al-Khanji has been at the center of the editing, printing and circulation of key Arabic and Islamic texts, providing a window onto the worlds of Arabic and Islamic manuscripts from the 1920s to the 1960s. “These archival materials reveal the intricate social relationships formed during that process between Muslim and non-Muslim European actors involved in the exchange of cultural and intellectual resources,” said Mostafa Hussein, assistant professor at the University of Michigan.
Ahmad Khan, assistant professor of Islamic studies at AUC who has conducted research on this archive and Maktabat al-Khanji as a whole, emphasized the significance of this collection. “This archive can help set a new research agenda and subdiscipline in the field of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, revealing new connections between actors, institutions and publishing houses across the Middle East.”
The Maktabat al-Khanji Archive has the potential to transform our modern-day understanding of book history and print culture in the Middle East and North Africa. The diverse material would be of critical interest to libraries, archivists and scholars of Arabo-Islamic intellectual thought, offering valuable insights in economic, book and provenance history as well as print culture, manuscript study and technology.
“This archive can help set a new research agenda and subdiscipline in the field of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies, revealing new connections between actors, institutions and publishing houses across the Middle East.”
“The al-Khānjī archive, for the first time, offers a perspective that was previously missing from the history of the region,” said Rana Mikati, associate professor at the College of Charleston. “Among other things, it corrects the narrative of the formation of European and North American collections of Islamic manuscripts that has emphasized the roles of foreign dealers and documents, their dependence on local actors and their expertise.”
Khan first met with the founder’s grandson, Mohammad Amin al-Khanj, in 2017, after which he began to research and examine some of the private documents of Maktabat al-Khanji. In 2023, Mikati and Garrett Davidson, associate professor at the College of Charleston, accessed and surveyed the entirety of the archive, furnishing a detailed inventory of the papers. Al-Khanji’s grandson chose to preserve the collection in Egypt after visiting AUC and touring the University’s library digitization lab and Rare Books and Special Collections Library.
“The attempt to better understand the provenance of the Princeton University collection of Islamic manuscripts led me to the al-Khānjī archive,” said Davidson. “What I found in this archive provides intimate documentation of not only that story but a much larger one: a mass translocation of manuscripts at the core of many other collections in the Near East, Europe and beyond.”
Sabine Schmidtke, professor at the Institute for Advanced Study, proposed the idea of a collaboration of institutions to preserve and study the collection and was the first to support the initiative, with help from the Gerard B. Lambert Foundation. The late William Noel of the Princeton University Library introduced and brought together the other four institutions to jointly support this project at AUC.
“The al-Khānjī archive, for the first time, offers a perspective that was previously missing from the history of the region.”
“The Khānjī archive will open up new venues for the study of the history of Arabic manuscript and book collections throughout Europe and beyond,” said Schmidtke. “What is particularly gratifying is the fact that our six institutions have worked smoothly together to acquire this important archive and thus to hold it together as one, perhaps providing a model for the rescue of comparable archives whenever they become available.”
Upon acquiring the unique archive, the AUC Library immediately initiated efforts to preserve the collection. The first step is to ensure conservation of the material. This involves implementing appropriate measures to protect and maintain the physical condition of the items in the collection. Following the conservation efforts, the library will proceed with the processing, digitization and metadata creation for the archive. “These essential steps are crucial to make the collection accessible and valuable for researchers, the collaborating institutions and the scholarly community at large,” said Eid.
