West African Arabic Manuscript Database

WAAMD (formerly AMMS) is a bi-lingual database that was developed at the University of Illinois in the late 1980s to describe a collection of Arabic manuscripts in southern Mauritania (Boutilimit). It subsequently has been used to catalogue seven other West African collections including the manuscript libraries at the Institut Mauritanien de Recherche Scientifique, Northwestern University, and the Centre Ahmad Baba in Timbuctu. Since 2008 print catalogues from West Africa published by al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation are being added. For more information on the activities and publications of the Foundation and these catalogues visit https://www.al-furqan.com.
The database has a search engine designed to identify manuscripts and authors when only fragmentary information is available, in Arabic or Roman script, for records now in excess of 41,000. Experimental linkage of digital images of manuscript texts to the records is currently underway.
The database and the WAAMD cataloguing tool are publicly available at no cost to users. The AMMS software for cataloging is free and can be downloaded for local use. Thirty-odd fields in Arabic and English cover all the descriptors normally employed in manuscript work and users may customize the input fields for the needs of particular collections. We encourage the inclusion of newly-catalogued material into the main data base; please contact the editors.