Gotha Library Talks on the "Orient digital" cooperation project

The portal "Orient Digital" is a cooperation project between the Oriental Department of the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek München, the Gotha Research Library and the IT Department of the Leipzig University Computer Centre. The project aims to establish a union catalogue and a portal for oriental manuscripts. The metadata of Islamic manuscripts in Arabic, Persian and Ottoman-Turkish and other languages from the cooperating institutions will be recorded and linked to the existing digital copies. The aim is also to establish common cataloguing standards, convert printed catalogues into electronic ones and merge all existing electronic records. In the talk, Wael Abbas will present the work steps, the progress and the challenges of the work on the project.

Abbas studied Islamic Studies in German at Azhar University in Cairo and is currently doing his doctorate at Goethe University in Frankfurt am Main. In his dissertation, he reconstructs the lost Qur'an commentary of the muʿtazilite theologian Abū Muslim al-Iṣfahānī (d. 934). Wael Abbas worked as an imam, translator, pastoral counsellor and lecturer in Quranic exegesis, systematic theology and Arabic manuscript studies and text edition at the Goethe University Frankfurt am Main. Since June 2020, he has been working as a research assistant at the Gotha Research Library in the DFG project Orient-Digital. The moderator will be Dr. Feras Krimsti, who is in charge of the library's collection of oriental manuscripts.

The event will take place online. You can dial in via the link: https://uni-erfurt.webex.com/meet/veranstaltungen.fb. Registration is not required.