Open Islamicate Texts Initiative

OpenITI Spring 2026 Reading Groups Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Turkish!

For more info: openiti.substack.com/p/openiti-sp...

This semester we are facilitating not one, not two, but THREE manuscript reading groups, with an Arabic-specific group starting this Wednesday! Check out our newsletter for more details, and DM/email if you'd like to sign up!

An Introduction and Invitation to the Safīnat al-baḥr al-muḥīṭ Manuscript Reading Group After a break over the summer, we will be picking our OpenITI manuscript reading group back up for the fall academic semester, with a somewhat different iter...

And find out more about the material for our Persian/Arabic group here:

From Damascus to Istanbul The OpenITI Fall/Winter Ottoman Turkish Reading Group

Read more about our Ottoman Turkish text here:

Ottoman Turkish meets on Mondays from 10 am to 12 pm (Eastern US time), Persian/Arabic on Fridays during the same time slot. If you'd like to join email, DM, etc, and we'll get you signed up!

In 2026 our two weekly Zoom-hosted manuscript reading groups will continue: in Ottoman Turkish we'll continue working on our anonymous travel account Fisher MSS 03218, while our Persian/Arabic group will tackle new texts from the Safīnat Baḥr al-muḥīt. We'd love to have you join us!

The angels (bar one) bow down before the newly created Adam, from a 1575 copy of the Majālis al-'ushshāq (BnF Supplément Persan 776):

The Tale of the Severed Head Creating a Multi-Text Edition of Dāstān-i Keşik Baş

New post describing my work of late on a fun little story contained in a diverse corpus of manuscripts spanning quite a long chronological period, from origins in Old Anatolian Turkish up to lithograph and print editions near the end of Ottoman Turkish being written in Arabic script:

From Damascus to Istanbul The OpenITI Fall/Winter Ottoman Turkish Reading Group

New post by @jparkesallen.bsky.social on our new Substack newsletter, subscribe if you'd like regular updates and essays, some of which will be integrated with new video interviews and other material we plan on releasing soon!

YouTube video by OpenITI Project Safīnat al-baḥr al-muḥīṭ Reading Group: Sharḥ-i asmāʾ-i ḥusná, continued

After a hiatus in (remembering to) record and post our Friday sessions, we've gotten back on track with our recording and uploading to our YouTube channel, so if you miss a Friday Persian session you can follow along later! Have a look at this week's session:

@jparkesallen.bsky.social

@mtmiller.bsky.social

Roshan Institute to Establish Persian Digital Library | Maryland Today Supported by $1.8M Private Gift, Project Will Be First of Its Kind

"[T]he initiative will provide free, global access to a constantly expanding body of classical and modern Persian texts. The project will also partner with institutions to help safeguard thousands of at-risk manuscripts and rare books from collections in India, Pakistan and beyond."

A really lovely copy of an Ottoman Turkish fatwa concerning coffee (Ṣūrat-i fetvā der ḥaḳḳ-i ḳaḥve ve cevāb-i marḥūm-i Būstānzāde), decidedly stylistically unusual rendering for a document of this sort; part of a truly miscellaneous mecmَū'a (Leipzig University, Vollers 1019):

حكى بعض الاخوان بأنه قد ورد إلى عين الحياة وأنها موجودة إلى الآن بارض من داخل اليمن وهي براس جبل وهي من مدينة صنعا مسافة اثنين وعشرين يوما فإذا وصل الانسان لذلك الجبل وجد باب العين ينزل له باثني عشر درجه ويشربون منها بعض الصلحا الواصلين وليس يبقون في الحياة مثل الخضر عليه السلام وهذه السعادة ما سبقت لاحد غيره واذا شربوا من تلك العين الصلحاء الذين قسم الله لهم نصيب يعيشون إلى الماية سنة ويزيدون

big if true

Unidentified men grabbing someone off the street and putting her in a car because she wrote an op-Ed. This as flatly authoritarian as anything we’ve seen in this country in a very long time.

Pages from a Chinese-language explanation of the Arabic alphabet, Tianfang zimu jieyi 天方字母解义, a Qing era work written by the prolific Han Kitab author Liu Zhi (1669–1764):

Manuscript reading groups resume this week after our spring break last week, further explorations in the Safīnat on Persian Tuesday, Dāstān-ı Aṣḥābü'l-kehf on Ottoman Wednesday, and more Persian in the form of Risālah dar dam zadan on Friday- hope to see you at some of these offerings!

Lots of manuscript reading options this week! Dāstān-i Bahrām wa Bihrūz on Persian Tuesday, Dāstān-ı Aṣḥābü'l-kehf on Ottoman Wednesday, and more of the life of the Druze Shaykh al-Fāḍil on Friday followed by more Persian in the form of Risālah dar dam zadan

OpenITI Open Hours (Friday 10 am -12 pm Eastern US time) will feature manuscripts presented by two of our colleagues: from 10 to 11 we'll continue looking at a Druze hagiographical text in Arabic, and from 11 to 12 we'll be introduced to a Persian treatise on breath control:

Repetition That Does Not Get Boring: Expressing Devotion in Druze Religious Poetry Some might know the 1945 Buddy Kaye and Ted Mossman song Till the End of Time, made famous by Perry Como. The beginning of the lyrics run like this:

For a preview of sorts see this recent article by Lorenz kitab-project.org/druze-corpus...

Arabic for Friday is now decided: we'll be starting a look at and group reading of Arabic manuscripts that hail from early modern Druze communities, with our colleagues Lorenz Nigst leading us in an introduction and exploration of this fascinating manuscript tradition

This week's lineup: in our Persian group we'll be reading Dāstān-i Bahrām wa Bihrūz on Tuesday, Dāstān-ı Aṣḥābü'l-kehf in our Ottoman Turkish group on Wednesday, and on Friday from 11 to 12 a tbd manuscript text in Arabic (10 to 11 am for standard office hours)

Pages from a very eclectic calligraphic (and seal) album, seems to be a very wide range of periods, places, and genres represented within just a handful of pages (Bodleian Library MS. Arab. c. 75)

New participants are always welcome, just DM for info about signing up!

Our Ottoman Turkish manuscript reading group, having seen the Kesik Baş to the end of his story, is now diving into another manuscript, Mehmed Emīn's Dāstān-ı Aṣḥābü'l-kehf (Tübingen Ma VII 83), relating, along with some theological and other reflections, the story of the Companions of the Cave

YouTube video by OpenITI Project Safīnat al-baḥr al-muḥīṭ Reading Group, January 28, 2025: All About Adab!

Have you ever wondered how to use the abjad values of your name and your mom's name to calculate whether that town or village you're thinking about moving to is right for you? If so, then today is your lucky day!

For this week's OpenITI Open Hours (Friday am) we're going to be reading together and discussing Lara Putman's influential 2016 article "The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast" and its implications for Islamicate DH (link below)

Reminder that we'll be holding "OpenITI Open Hours" today from 10 am to 12 pm Eastern US time (link: umd.zoom.us/j/91533462213), feel free to stop by and ask questions about what we're up to at OpenITI, how you can get involved; or bring a manuscript you'd like to look at with others

For our Tuesday Persian manuscript reading group, we're going to be working through this curiously arranged little text on "the adāb of sneezing, yawning, burping, and drinking water," so you can work on your Persian skills *and* your etiquette knowledge, a two for one deal!