The Development of Islamic Library Collections in Western Europe and North America

This is an examination of Islamic library collections in ten countries - Canada, Denmark, France, Germany, Great Britain, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United States - and looks at both the collections themselves and how and why they were developed. The book has a wide subject coverage, from commentaries on the Quran and Hadith to texts on history, literature, geography, medicine, astronomy, mathematics and philosophy. The works are primarily in Arabic, Persian and Turkish, but also in Urdu, Pashtu, Javanese, Malay, Makassar, Swahili and dialects of these languages. This book may also be useful in the study of the political, economic, cultural and scholarly influences that have shaped the relationship between Islamic and Western societies over 1400 years.