(Wikipedia)
Alphonse Mingana (born as Hurmiz Mingana; Syriac: ܗܪܡܙ ܡܢܓܢܐ,) was born in 1878 at Sharanesh, a village near Zakho.
He was a theologian, historian, orientalist and a former priest who is best known for collecting and preserving the Mingana Collection of ancient Middle Eastern manuscripts at Birmingham. Like the majority of Assyrians in the Zakho region, his family belonged to the Chaldean Catholic Church. Alphonse was born to Paolus and Maryam Nano, and had seven siblings.
In 1913 Mingana came to England at the invitation of J. Rendel Harris, Director of Studies at Woodbrooke Quaker Study Centre, at Birmingham. Mingana remained at Woodbrooke for two years where he
met his future wife, Emma Sophie Floor, a Norwegian student. The couple
were married in 1915. In the same year Mingana was appointed to the
staff of the John Rylands Library
in Manchester to catalog the Library's collection of Arabic
manuscripts. He lived in Manchester until 1932 during which time his two
children, John and Marie, were born. By the time Mingana left John
Rylands in 1932, he had risen to the post of Keeper of the Oriental
Manuscripts.
In 1924 Mingana made the first of three trips to the Middle East to collect ancient Syriac and Arabic
manuscripts. The expedition was sponsored by John Rylands Library and
Dr Edward Cadbury, the Quaker owner of the famous chocolate factory at Bournville,
who Mingana had met through Rendel Harris. A number of the manuscripts
he returned with formed the basis of the Mingana Collection at
Woodbrooke. Mingana added to the collection with manuscripts acquired on
two further trips to the Middle East in 1925 and 1929, both trips were
financed solely by Edward Cadbury. In 1932 Mingana moved back to
Birmingham to focus on cataloging the collection. The first catalogue
describing 606 Syriac manuscripts was published in 1933. A further
volume published in 1936 describes 120 Christian Arabic manuscripts and
16 Syriac manuscripts. The third volume, cataloging 152 Christian Arabic
manuscripts and 40 Syriac manuscripts was published in 1939, two years
after Mingana's death.
The Mingana Collection is housed at Special Collections at the University of Birmingham where it is available for study.[1]
The collection is designated by the Museums, Libraries and Archives
Council as being of international importance. A major exhibition of
manuscripts from the collection entitled Illuminating Faith was held at the Birmingham Museum & Art Gallery in 2005.
The Mingana Collection is made up of:
- 660 Syriac and Karshuni (Arabic in Syriac characters) Christian
manuscripts including church documents, gospels, works on liturgy, lives
of saints and homilies. Among the earliest items are a number of
important fragments originating from St. Catherine's Monastery, Sinai.
- 270 Arabic Christian manuscripts including a fragment of the oldest
known text of the Acta Thomae, and a very early copy of the Arabic
translation of some works by St. Ephrem.
- 2000 Arabic Islamic manuscripts mainly on religious subjects. There
are several copies of the Qur'an, besides two collections of fragments
of Kufic Qur'ans, dating from the 8th and 9th centuries AD. Other works
include Qur'an commentaries, Hadith, law, literature, science and
mysticism.
- Examples of Armenian, Coptic, Georgian, Greek, Hebrew, Persian, Samaritan and Sanskrit manuscripts.
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