BTS 29
1984. 479 pp. english text, 6 pp. arabic text, 17 plates.
The approximately nine hundred Islamic documents comprising the Haram collection were discovered in two batches, in August 1974 and October 1976, in the Islamic Museum located within the precincts of al-Haram as-Sarif in Jerusalem. Situated in a vaulted hall built by the Crusaders, just west of al-Masgid al-Aqsa and adjacent to Bab al-Magariba in the west wall of the Haram, the museum had been closed for renovation and repairs for more than a year when the first discovery was made by the curator, Amal Abul-Hajj. In spite of their crumpled condition and the near illegibility of the scripts that covered many, Abul-Hajj was able to read enough dates to determine that they were six hundred and more years old and that they seemed, accordingly, to relate to the period of Mamluk rule in Jerusalem and Palestine.
Donald P. Little is Professor at the Institute of Islāmic Studie at McGill University Montreal. His researches focus on the early history and the Middle Ages, especially focusing the Mamluk era.