About Kairawan
Kairawan is a public search for Arabic and Islamic manuscripts, aggregating records from the world's catalogues into a single index.
Researchers use it to find witnesses of known works, discover unedited texts, locate manuscripts by scribe or holding institution, and read existing transcriptions where licensing allows.
The catalogue is built from openly-licensed sources and grows as new collections are harvested.
What's indexed today
- Manuscripts
- 264,244
- Works
- 19,751
- Persons
- 35,755
- Institutions
- 370
Index as of 2026-07-27.
Counts reflect the index at the most recent build.
Sources & attribution
Kairawan indexes manuscripts from nine collections worldwide. See the full list, with attribution and licences, on the Sources page →
How to cite
If you reference Kairawan in published work or grant reports, please cite the platform using the formats below.
Plain text
The Kairawan Project. (2026). Kairawan: An Open-Access Federated Search Index for Arabic and Islamic Manuscripts (Version 1.0.0) [Software]. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20562455
BibTeX
@software{kairawan_project_2026,
author = {{The Kairawan Project}},
title = {Kairawan: An Open-Access Federated Search Index for Arabic and Islamic Manuscripts},
month = jun,
year = 2026,
publisher = {Zenodo},
version = {1.0.0},
doi = {10.5281/zenodo.20562455},
url = {https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.20562455}
}