The Arabic Papyrology Database
www.naher-osten.lmu.de/apd

How to use DOCUMENTS

DOCUMENTS offers you direct access to entire documents with all details. Up to now the database holds 13536 documents and is steadily increasing.
By default no document is shown - you will have to choose from and specify the following categories to obtain the list of documents you are interested in:

Name

Refers to the abbreviation of a document, given according to the ISAP checklist (in the case of monographs) or the The (Full) Arabic Papyrology Bibliography of Editions and Research (in case of articles).
In this compilation you find after each edition the abbreviation in angular brackets, e.g.

  • - Anawati, Georges C. and Jomier, Jacques, Un papyrus chrétien en arabe (Egypte, IXe siècle ap. J.-C.), Mélanges Islamologiques 2 (1954) 91-102 [P.AnawatiPapyrusChrétien] APD (UB/EG)
  • - Diem, Werner, Arabische Geschäftsbriefe des 10. bis 14. Jahrhunderts aus der Österreichischen Nationalbibliothek in Wien, 2 vol. Wiesbaden 1995 (Documenta Arabica Antiqua 1) [P.Vind.Arab. I]

In case the edition is already completely entered into the APD including full text of documents, you will find a green “APD” sign after the abbreviation.

Inv.No.

Refers to the inventory number. See the list of abbreviations of collections in The (Full) Arabic Papyrology Bibliography of Editions and Research.

Kind

Refers to the literary genre, have a look at the compilation in Metadata.

Title

Refers to the title given to the document by the editor. If no title was given by the editor, title contains a title based on the description of the document assigned to by APD staff. Be aware of the different languages of publications, so titles may be in French, English, German, Spanish, Italian, Russian or Arabic (in Latin characters).

Material

Refers to the material of the document, thus paper, papyrus, leather etc.

Languages

The APD contains only Arabic documents in Arabic script. However, some of the documents are bilingual or trilingual.

Origin

Refers to the place the documents have been found or been archived in pre-modern times. Use the pull-down menu to choose from a hierarchical organisation of the provenances.

Year

Restrict your search here chronically. Make sure you type in the years in CE not in AH.

Search anywhere

The input in this field will be searched for in all categories of metadata, the ones already given and further categories such as emendations, references in literature etc.

Checkbox

Checking the box at the end of the search categories will restrict your search to documents whose full text has already been entered, i.e. that do not only provide metadata but the text of the document itself.

The search results in a list of DOCUMENTS, according to your specifications.

  • - A click on the "+"-sign will give you the full metadata.
  • - A "TEXT"-link will occur, if the full text of the document is already implemented into the database. Click on it in order to access the full text in different layers.
  • - In column “ORIGIN”, a click on the “TM”-link will give you access the database of places related to the ancient world complied by Trismegistos, where you will find more geographical and historical information about these specific places.
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