Open Access Manuscripts Collection: Manuscripts in St. Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai

 Manuscripts in St. Catherine's Monastery, Mount Sinai
1694 manuscripts digitized by Library of Congress from the set of microfilms.

"The renowned Eastern Orthodox Monastery of St. Catherine’s on Mt. Sinai was constructed by the Byzantine Emperor, Justinian I, in the late sixth century AD over the relics of the martyred saint and the place of the biblical burning bush as identified by St. Helena, the mother of the Roman Emperor, Constantine.  It is home to reputedly the oldest continuously run library in existence today. Its holdings of religious and secular manuscripts are legendary and allegedly second only in number to the collection held by the Vatican: from bibles, to patristic works, to liturgies and prayers books, and on to legal documents such as deeds, court cases, Fatwahs (legal opinions).  The greater proportion of the manuscripts were copied in Greek, and then in Syriac, Georgian, Coptic, Armenian, Arabic, Ottoman Turkish, and Ethiopic, as well as Old Church Slavonic..."


Languages:

• Greek, Ancient (to 1453) 1,081
• Arabic 308
• Syriac 156
• Georgian 85
• Old Church Slavonic 43
• Old Bulgarian 43
• Church Slavonic 43
• Old Slavonic 43
• Church Slavic 43
• English 6
• More Languages  

See also: Alphabetical List of Open Access Islamic Manuscripts Collections