The Septuagint, sometimes referred to as the Greek Old Testament or The Translation of the Seventy, and often abbreviated as LXX, is the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible from the original Hebrew. The full Greek title derives from the story recorded in the Letter of Aristeas to Philocrates that "the laws of the Jews" were translated into the Greek language at the request of Ptolemy II Philadelphus by seventy-two Hebrew translators—six from each of the Twelve Tribes of Israel.
The Avesta is the primary collection of religious texts of Zoroastrianism, composed in the Avestan language.
The Masoretic Text is the authoritative Hebrew and Aramaic text of the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) in Rabbinic Judaism. The Masoretic Text defines the Jewish canon and its precise letter-text, with its vocalization and accentuation known as the mas'sora. Referring to the Masoretic Text, masorah specifically means the diacritic markings of the text of the Jewish scriptures and the concise marginal notes in manuscripts of the Tanakh which note textual details, usually about the precise spelling of words. It was primarily copied, edited, and distributed by a group of Jews known as the Masoretes between the 7th and 10th centuries of the Common Era (CE). The oldest known complete copy, the Leningrad Codex, dates from the early 11th century CE.
The Dead Sea Scrolls, also called the Qumran Caves Scrolls, are a set of ancient Jewish manuscripts from the Second Temple period. They were discovered over a period of 10 years, between 1946 and 1956, at the Qumran Caves near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the northern shore of the Dead Sea. Dating from the 3rd century BCE to the 1st century CE, the Dead Sea Scrolls are considered to be a keystone in the history of archaeology with great historical, religious, and linguistic significance because they include the oldest surviving manuscripts of entire books later included in the biblical canons, along with extra-biblical and deuterocanonical manuscripts that preserve evidence of the diversity of religious thought in late Second Temple Judaism. At the same time, they cast new light on the emergence of Christianity and of Rabbinic Judaism. Almost all of the 15,000 scrolls and scroll fragments are held in the Shrine of the Book at the Israel Museum, located in the city of Jerusalem. The Israeli government's custody of the Dead Sea Scrolls is disputed by Jordan and the Palestinian Authority on territorial, legal, and humanitarian grounds — they were mostly discovered following the Jordanian annexation of the West Bank and were acquired by Israel after Jordan lost the 1967 Arab–Israeli War — whilst Israel's claims are primarily based on historical and religious grounds, given their significance in Jewish history and in the heritage of Judaism.
Abul-Qâsem Ferdowsi Tusi, also Firdawsi or Ferdowsi, was a Persian poet and the author of Shahnameh, which is one of the world's longest epic poems created by a single poet, and the greatest epic of Persian-speaking countries. Ferdowsi is celebrated as one of the most influential figures of Persian literature and one of the greatest in the history of literature.
The Shahnameh, also transliterated Shahnama, is a long epic poem written by the Persian poet Ferdowsi between c. 977 and 1010 CE and is the national epic of Greater Iran. Consisting of some 50,000 "distichs" or couplets, the Shahnameh is one of the world's longest epic poems. It tells mainly the mythical and to some extent the historical past of the Persian Empire from the creation of the world until the Muslim conquest in the seventh century. Iran, Azerbaijan, Afghanistan, Tajikistan and the greater region influenced by Persian culture such as Armenia, Dagestan, Georgia, Turkey, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan celebrate this national epic.
The Gandhāran Buddhist texts are the oldest Buddhist manuscripts yet discovered, dating from about the 1st century BCE to 3rd century CE and found in the northwestern outskirts of the Indian subcontinent. They represent the literature of Gandharan Buddhism from present-day northwestern Pakistan and eastern Afghanistan, and are written in Gāndhārī.
Birch bark manuscripts are documents written on pieces of the inner layer of birch bark, which was commonly used for writing before the mass production of paper. Evidence of birch bark for writing goes back many centuries and appears in various cultures. The oldest such manuscripts are the numerous Gandhāran Buddhist texts from approximately the 1st century CE, from what is now Afghanistan. They contain among the earliest known versions of significant Buddhist scriptures, including a Dhammapada, discourses of Buddha that include the Rhinoceros Sutra, Avadanas and Abhidharma texts.
The Skanda Purana is the largest Mukhyapurana, a genre of eighteen Hindu religious texts. The text contains over 81,000 verses, and is of Shaivite literature, titled after Skanda, a son of Shiva and Parvati. While the text is named after Skanda, he does not feature either more or less prominently in this text than in other Shiva-related Puranas. The text has been an important historical record and influence on the Hindu traditions and rituals related to the war-god Skanda.
Ṣaḥīfat Hammām ibn Munabbih, lit. 'The Book of Hammam ibn Munabbih', is a hadith collection compiled by the Islamic scholar Hammam ibn Munabbih. It is sometimes quoted as one of the earliest surviving works of its kind.
A biblical manuscript is any handwritten copy of a portion of the text of the Bible. Biblical manuscripts vary in size from tiny scrolls containing individual verses of the Jewish scriptures to huge polyglot codices containing both the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) and the New Testament, as well as extracanonical works.
Palm-leaf manuscripts are manuscripts made out of dried palm leaves. Palm leaves were used as writing materials in the Indian subcontinent and in Southeast Asia dating back to the 5th century BCE. Their use began in South Asia and spread to other regions, as texts on dried and smoke-treated palm leaves of the Palmyra palm or the talipot palm. Their use continued until the 19th century when printing presses replaced hand-written manuscripts.
The British Library is a research library in London that is the national library of the United Kingdom. It is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British Library receives copies of all books produced in the United Kingdom and Ireland, including a significant proportion of overseas titles distributed in the UK. The Library is a non-departmental public body sponsored by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport.
In Muslim tradition the Quran is the final revelation from God, Islam's divine text, delivered to the Islamic prophet Muhammad through the angel Jibril (Gabriel). Muhammad's revelations were said to have been recorded orally and in writing, through Muhammad and his followers up until his death in 632 CE. These revelations were then compiled by first caliph Abu Bakr and codified during the reign of the third caliph Uthman so that the standard codex edition of the Quran or Muṣḥaf was completed around 650 CE, according to Muslim scholars. This has been critiqued by some western scholarship, suggesting the Quran was canonized at a later date, based on the dating of classical Islamic narratives, i.e. hadiths, which were written 150–200 years after the death of Muhammad, and partly because of the textual variations present in the Sana'a manuscript. With the discovery of earlier manuscripts which conform to the Uthmanic standard however, the revisionist view has fallen out of favor and been described as "untenable", with western scholarship generally supporting the classical Muslim view.
Shahnameh of Rashidā is an illustrated manuscript of the Shahnameh, the national epic of Greater Iran. It contains 738 pages with 93 miniatures in Isfahan School. The miniatures have been attributed to Mohammad Yusef, a Safavid-era painter. This manuscript dates from the 17th century and now it is located in the Golestan Palace. The calligraphy of this manuscript has been attributed to ʿAbd al-Rashid Daylami and for this reason, it is called the "Rashida Shahnameh".
The Windsor Shahnameh or Shahnameh of Qarajaghay Khan is an illustrated manuscript of the Shahnameh, the national epic of Greater Iran. It is one of the most famous manuscripts of the Shahnameh, dating from 1648. The painters are Muhammad Qasim and Muhammad Yusuf. The miniatures of this Shahnameh are very similar to the miniatures of the Shahnameh of Rashida, and therefore it has been suggested that these manuscripts have been prepared by the same painters.
The Great Mongol Shahnameh, also known as the Demotte Shahnameh or Great Ilkhanid Shahnama, is an illustrated manuscript of the Shahnameh, the national epic of Greater Iran, probably dating to the 1330s. In its original form, which has not been recorded, it was probably planned to consist of about 280 folios with 190 illustrations, bound in two volumes, although it is thought it was never completed. It is the largest early book in the tradition of the Persian miniature, in which it is "the most magnificent manuscript of the fourteenth century", "supremely ambitious, almost awe-inspiring", and "has received almost universal acclaim for the emotional intensity, eclectic style, artistic mastery and grandeur of its illustrations".
Abu-Mansuri Shahnameh or The Shahnameh of Abu-Mansur was a prose epic and history of Persian Empire before Muslim conquests. It was the main source of Shahnameh of Ferdowsi. The Shahnameh of Abu-Mansur is now lost, but its preface which consists of 15 pages, has survived and is one of the oldest examples of Persian prose and is considered one of the most valuable heritages of Persian literature. The Shahnameh of Abu-Mansur was composed at the order of Abu Mansur Muhammad in 346 AH. It was composed by four mowbeds: Old Mākh from Herat, Yazdāndād son of Shāpur from Sistan, Shāhooy-e Khorshid son of Bahrām from Nishapur, Shādān son of Barzin from Tus. Before Ferdowsi, Abu-Mansur Daqiqi tried to versify the Shahnameh of Abu-Mansur, but he died after writing almost 1000 verses. Ferdowsi has included these 1000 verses in his Shahnameh.
Tarikh-i Bal'ami or Tārīkhnāma-yi Bozorg is the earliest known extant prose book in the Persian language written by Muhammad Bal'ami, a vizier in Samanid service. The 10th-century text is a universal history, spanning a period beginning with the dawn of creation through to the Islamic age. Having been translated into Turkish and Arabic, the book remained in circulation for a thousand years, and it is among the most influential books of Islamic historical literature. While the author claims the book is a Persian translation of al-Tabari's History of the Prophets and Kings, it is actually an independent work.
The Spitzer Manuscript is the oldest surviving philosophical manuscript in Sanskrit, and possibly the oldest Sanskrit manuscript of any type related to Buddhism and Hinduism discovered so far. The manuscript was found in 1906 in the form of a pile of more than 1,000 palm leaf fragments in the Ming-oi, Kizil Caves, China during the third Turfan expedition headed by Albert Grünwedel. It is named after Moritz Spitzer, whose team first studied it in 1927–28.
