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
270,243
Works
19,751
Persons
35,755
Institutions
370

Index as of 2026-05-22.

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 →

See all sources