Milan: the Biblioteca Ambrosiana uses AI to digitise Arabic manuscripts
Thanks to a project backed by the Lombardy Region, Milan’s Ambrosiana Library has digitised an important collection of Arabic manuscripts. The Nainuwa platform will make it possible to consult remotely ancient texts from the Christian and Islamic traditions, facilitating research activities and interreligious dialogue.
Milan (AsiaNews) – The Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana in Milan has implemented a project that will allow users to consult and research ancient Arabic manuscripts from their computer and even their mobile phone thanks to artificial intelligence (AI), something made possible thanks to funding from the Lombardy Region and the collaboration with Treventus Mechatronics GmBh, a Vienna-based digitisation company.
Starting tomorrow, it will be possible to access the Nainuwa platform with features made available by AI for the recognition of handwritten texts. Not only images of the manuscripts will be available, but also the transcriptions of the texts.
The project, which involves the digitisation of about a thousand Arabic manuscripts over a period of about three years, will make 250 texts and 96,000 pages immediately available online, including a Qur'an in Sufic script with gold miniatures dating back to the 8th-9th century (see picture 1) and a translation of the Gospels into Arabic made at the Monastery of Saint Anthony, in Egypt, in 1280, copying the original translation by Abu l-Farag Hibatullah al-As'ad Ibn al'Assal (see picture 2).
The Library inaugurated a digital version in 2019, with the project “Arabic Manuscripts in the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana: the digital collection”. For this, “we are grateful for the support received from the Lombardy Region,” said Mgr Francesco Braschi, vice prefect and director of Slavistics, African and Oriental courses at the Accademia Ambrosiana, during the inauguration event held today in Milan.
With the latest addition, “the Biblioteca Ambrosiana confirms both its vocation born ‘for the glory of God and the common good’, and the particular attention that its founder, Card Federico Borromeo, always had for the Arab language and culture,” Mgr Braschi added.
Cardinal Borromeo was a member of the commission charged with revising the Vulgate, the Latin translation of the Bible, and for this task he consulted versions of the Scriptures in various oriental languages. He later instructed his agents to purchase Christian and Islamic codices and manuscripts from the Near East.
In fact, he gave great value “to relations with Eastern Churches, in particular the Maronite and Coptic, to preserve and enhance the Arab Christian cultural heritage", Mgr Braschi explained.
The Biblioteca Ambrosiana, inaugurated in 1609, today has about a million printed volumes and 35,000 manuscripts collected between the 16th and 20th centuries that represent different cultural and religious traditions, from the Turkish-Ottoman to the Iraqi and ancient Egyptian.
The Arab collection is certainly “the most important and the most precious in Milan”, said Mgr Marco Maria Navoni, Prefect of the Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, during the inauguration.
The largest part of the ancient collection includes works on Islamic literature, for which Borromeo himself, who created a compendium in 1627 to explain the Christian faith to Muslims, always paid particular attention. Also for this reason, the digitisation of Arabic manuscripts is “in absolute continuity with the sensitivity of Federico Borromeo", Mgr Braschi noted.
The library’s director, Mgr Federico Gallo expressed hope that the project would further promote interreligious dialogue, noting that the institute made available ancient works in collaboration with Notre Dame University (which put some manuscripts preserved at the Ambrosiana on microfilm in the 1960s) and the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart of Milan.
Lombardy Regional Councillor for Culture, lawyer Francesca Caruso, said that the Region would soon issue new tenders for cultural programmes regarding activities of the Ambrosiana, stressing that “these projects make the Lombardy Region proud”.
Dr Fabio Cusimano, responsible for cataloguing and digitising the Library’s works, reiterated the importance of making the heritage of the Biblioteca Ambrosiana accessible to anyone through new technologies that make it possible to go beyond the concept of “digital images of analogue objects”.
Treventus Mechatronics has used these technologies. As the company's co-founder, engineer Stephan Tratter, put it, the digital capture of manuscript content was made possible thanks to a ScanRobot that collects data on the page even if the manuscript is not fully opened.
The name of the online platform, Nainuwa, Tratter added, corresponds to the Latin transcription of the Arabic name for Nineveh, the ancient city in Mesopotamia that housed a library, the Royal Library of Ashurbanipal, dating back to 1,800 BC, which had 25,000 clay tablets in cuneiform writing, all the knowledge of the time.
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09/06/2014
