Millenary Manuscripts Conference on its Opening:
Our Millenary Heritage Marks the Culmination of Excellence of the Arab Civilization

Dr Ismail Serageldin opened the Millenary Manuscripts Conference with his address on the role of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina in the revival of cultural heritage. Following, Dr Youssef Ziedan maintained that the aim of the conference is accentuating the Library's missions to disseminate knowledge, preserve and promote heritage. 

The first session, chaired by Dr Abdel Hamid Sabra, was initiated by Dr Ramzan Sessen's paper on the millenary manuscripts in Turkey. Dr Hans Nordesjo followed with his review of Arabic manuscripts at Uppsala University Library. He indicated the bad condition of the majority of this collection, which calls for immediate action for digitizing the damaged codices. In this context, cooperation with the BA and the Uppsala Library takes place to publish a number of rare Arabic manuscripts on the Internet. The session was concluded with Dr Marie-Genevieve Guesdon's survey of the millenary manuscript collection at the BNF. She summed up the significant characteristics of the manuscripts dated back to the 10th and 11th centuries.

In the second session, Dr Ahmed al-Tayyeb talked about the ancient manuscripts at al-Azhar University. He pointed out the difficulty of dating the majority of the collections due to the absence of colophons, other indications or the negligence of the cataloger to mention the correct date, let alone that many manuscripts have not been classified yet. Dr Ayman Fouad Sayyed treated the millenary manuscripts at Dar al-Kutub referring to the circumstances of their acquisition, significance and the development of Arabic script through reviewing assorted samples. 

The third session was concerned with two verse manuscripts. The two speakers were keen to explain the text and to highlight their significance.

The fourth session, chaired by Dr Faysal al-Hafyan, presented insightful studies of a number of millenary manuscripts. Dr Abdullah Muharib discussed two manuscripts of al-Sinā‘atayn and al-Kunā wal-Asmā' in addition to three almost millenary manuscripts. Dr Essam al-Shanti presented a witty study of al-Jāhiz's Risāla fī Madh al-Kutub wal Hath alā Jam‘ihā. He stated that this manuscript could be the second that can be undisputedly attributed to Ibn al-Bawwāb. The third speaker, Mr. Ahmed Selim talked about the characteristics of another millenary manuscript: Marāth wa Aš‘ār wa Ghayr Dhālik wa Akhbār wa Lugha. 

The first day of the conference ended with a visit to the Manuscript & Rare Book Showroom and the Manuscript Reading Room.

The significant issues raised in the first sessions were the problem of manuscript accessibility, lack of exhaustive catalogs of the Arabic collections scattered all over the world, incomprehensiveness of the existing catalogs for many scholars; being printed in limited languages, etc. 

Many participants recommended to hold a number of conferences to investigate certain vital topics in the field of codicology, such as: transcription and transcriber, nisba and laqab, translated and printed works from the millenary legacy, relations between original millenary manuscripts and their copies, characteristics of the titles of millenary manuscripts, distinguishing features of waqf, and many others. Such an amazing interest in issues pertaining to millenary manuscripts in particular stemmed from their momentousness as the mark of the culmination of excellence of the Arab civilization and history.