The Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation is a non-profit academic organisation founded to support and advance the protection, preservation and study of the Islamic intellectual and artistic heritage. It specialises in scholarly publishing, fine book design, and the care and management of manuscript collections.
The Foundation has offices in Cairo, Egypt; and Stuttgart, Germany. The principal projects of the Foundation are:
The Sunna Project is the Foundation’s flagship project. It seeks to assemble of the entirety of hadith literature—that is, the literature comprising narrations of the sayings and actions of the Prophet Muhammad 
. A select group of scholars of hadith are engaged in preparing definitive editions of hadith collections.
This has involved the identification, study, and careful comparison of manuscripts from libraries and museums around the world.
- The first publication of the Sunna Project’s ongoing Hadith Encyclopedia is an eighteen-volume set comprising of the six canonical hadith collections (Boukhary, Sahih Muslem, Sunan Abi Dawood, Jamie Al Termizei, Sunan Al Nisaie, Sunan Ibn Majeh) and the Muwatta of Imam Malik ibn Anas.
- The second instalment consists of a new fourteen-volume edition of the Musnad of Imam Ahmad ibn Hanbal, containing tens of hadith that have not appeared in any previous printed edition of the work, but which are present in the earliest and most reliable manuscripts.
- The third instalment comprises fully revised editions of the Sunan of Ibn Maja and Muwatta of Imam Malik, compiled from the earliest manuscript sources and editions of the Musnad Humaidi, the Sunan Al-Darimi, the Sunan Al-Darqutni, and the Mu‘ajam As-Saghir of Imam Al-Tabarani.
The printed edition of the Hadith Encyclopedia is supplemented by the International Hadith Studies Association Network website (ihsan)— www.ihsanetwork.org — which allows for the full text of the printed edition to be accessed and searched according to various criteria.
The Islamic Manuscript Association (TIMA) is an international non-profit organization dedicated to preserving and protecting Islamic, Arabic, and Arabic-script manuscript collections. Its mission extends to supporting professionals who work with these manuscripts and introducing new generations to their rich cultural legacy and historical importance.
The aims of the Association are to:
- establish standards and guidelines for best practices in cataloging, conservation, digitization, and academic publishing, ensuring that manuscript collections are accessible and preserved for future generations.
- promote the highest ethical and professional standards in the care and management of collections, and excellence in scholarship on Islamic manuscripts, particularly in codicology and related disciplines.
- facilitate dialogue between scholars, professionals, and institutions with an interest in Islamic, Arabic, and Arabic-script manuscripts.
Since its foundation in 2006, the Association has organized twelve conferences in partnership with the Cambridge University’s Centre of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, the HRH Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal Centre of Islamic Studies, and Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation. These provide a platform to further TIMA’s aims to address both the technical and academic aspects of manuscript preservation and study.
Through its Grant Schemes, offered between 2007 and 2018, TIMA provided financial and expert assistance to more than 50 different projects in over 20 countries worldwide, supporting scholars, publications, and the preservation and documentation of endangered manuscript collections. The Grant Schemes will resume in January 2025.
For more information about the Association, its membership, events, and recent publications, please visit www.islamicmanuscript.org.
The Foundation has signed a protocol with the National Library of Egypt (Dar al-Kutub) to assist with the care, management, conservation, and curation of their manuscript collection. Theirsis the most extensive manuscript collection in the Arab World and one of the most important in the Islamic cultural sphere. Its more than 55,000 manuscript-bound volumes, 1,000 calligraphic panels, and 5,000 papyri span from the beginning of the Islamic era to the twentieth century.
The project's main contributions are collaborating in setting up and maintaining the Museum of the National Library at Bab Al-Khalq premises, preparing publications and promotional materials for the collection, renovating the manuscripts’ storage infrastructure, developing imaging facilities, running the facility’s archival boxing program, andmaintaining a digital management system implemented by the foundation for Dar al-Kutub, which involved the barcoding of each volume. The project also involves the continued professional development of the library’s staff in preservation, conservation, and digitization activities, and is working to prepare catalogues for its invaluable collection.
Editio Electrum is the Foundation’s design studio. The studio carries out the Foundation’s efforts to revive the traditional arts of the Islamic book. The studio combines traditional workshop techniques with the latest possibilities in digital design and print technology to develop the visual language of medieval illumination in a new and exciting medium.
Fine art prints of Qur’anic illumination produced by Editio Electrum have been exhibited in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain, Egypt, the UK and the USA. In 2006, the Foundation’s Shama’il al-Nabi, designed by Editio Electrum, was the first Arabic book to win a place in the American Institute of Graphic Arts’ 50/50 annual book design competition. In 2020, the studio completed the production of a new official edition of the Holy Qur’an for Al-Azhar Al-Sharif, inspired by the great works made under Mamluk patronage.
The Islamic Art Network provides a number of important resources for Islamic art and architectural historians. Its online digital photo archive, which was prepared with the support and permission of Egypt’s Supreme Council of Antiquities, contains over 9,000 images of the Islamic architectural monuments of Cairo.
In cooperation with the Rare Books and Special Collections Library of the American University in Cairo and Dr Alaa El-Habashi, the Network has digitised and made available online the 71 French and Arabic language issues of the Bulletin of the Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l’Art Arabe, the standard resource for the study of the Islamic architecture of Cairo. The Bulletin describes the restoration work carried out on the Islamic monuments of Cairo from 1882-1953. It includes full descriptions of the monuments and their histories as well as photographs, drawings, and plans. Some of the monuments recorded in the Bulletin have disappeared and others were disfigured by later restoration work. For this reason, it is invaluable. Only the Islamic Art Network and the University of Pennsylvania have complete collections of the Bulletin.
Additionally, the Network has digitised important out-of-print books and rare articles on Islamic art and architecture and made them available online. Among these publications are Max Herz Pasha’s 1899 monograph entitled Mosquee du Sultan au Caire and the Memoires of the Institut d’Egypte.
Onetradition is the imprint dedicated to the Foundation’s publications of spiritual and metaphysical writings from all major religious traditions. The Onetradition project rests on the belief that the best way to understand and learn from the great religious traditions is through their most profound exponents. The imprint has produced an Arabic translation of the Tao Teh Ching. The Onetradition website hosts a complete searchable version of Ibn ‘Arabi’s al-Futuhat al-Makkiya. Forthcoming online publications include Arabic translations of the Diamond Sutra, the Bhagavad Gita, the works of Frithjof Schuon and the works of René Guénon.
Qirab™ is dedicated to supporting the preservation of manuscripts within the Islamic cultural sphere through knowledge sharing and open source technology. We publish Arabic translations of technical texts and standards as well as produce innovative hardware and software designs.