A cartographical plot twist - Floris Balthasar’s map of the siege of Sluis and its missing legend reunited

This intriguing map by Floris Balthasar, preserved in the UBL collections, depicts the story of the capture of Sluis during the Dutch Revolt. Recently, 420 years after the siege, Anne-Rieke van Schaik discovered the missing legend and explanation, shedding light on the map’s narrative and purpose.

Guest author • December 11, 2024

An intimate conversation between present and past in Loes Huis in ’t Veld’s "Cavafy my father and me"

Leiden University Libraries recently acquired a beautiful work of art in the form of a book: "Cavafy my father and me" by Loes Huis in 't Veld. Cavafy expert Maria Boletsi discusses how this artistic rendering fits into the broader tradition of adaptations of Cavafy's works.

Guest author • October 31, 2024

“A glimpse of knowledge”: Lessons from a Nineteenth-Century Arabic Textbook for Amharic

A rare Arabic primer to the Amharic language from 1872 CE provides unique insight into nineteenth-century trends in Egyptian education, Egyptian-Ethiopian relations, and the development of Arabic print culture.

Guest author • October 09, 2024

The Iranian Diaspora in Southeast Asia: Old Manuscript, New Perspectives

Majid Daneshgar discusses a rare Persian-Malay manuscript: Or. 5658. It provides a clearer picture of the history of Persian proficient people and Persian-Shīʿīsm in Indonesia.

Guest author • April 24, 2024

Identifying woodcut prints from a 1541 Dutch Livy translation

Thirteen woodcut prints in an uncatalogued box lead to an interesting quest through old books in the Leiden Special Collections. Danny Sunder explains how classic and modern techniques help identify unlinked images, enriching catalogue records.

Guest author • April 17, 2024

Islam in your pocket: A rich yet endangered collection linking Leiden and East Africa

How is one a good Muslim in the modern world? In East Africa, from the 1930s onwards, Islam became portable and accessible: new notions of morality were packed into pocket-size booklets cheaply printed in India. What makes this 982-booklet corpus so unique and fragile?

Guest author • January 16, 2024

Depicting the Qing Empire's Periphery: A Miao Album with Painted Maps

Miao albums depict people and places in the Chinese southwestern borderland, but very few of them contain maps of the region. The painted maps in the Leiden University Libraries Miao albums may offer insight into the history of the region and its administration.

Guest author • October 24, 2023

Portraying Ethnic Groups in Yunnan: A Miao Album with Silk Watercolour Paintings

An exceptional two-volume Miao album, recently acquired by Leiden University Libraries, depicts non-Han ethnic groups living in Yunnan Province. The manner in which these groups are depicted tells us a lot about how officials viewed ethnic minorities in the Southwest of the Qing Empire.

Guest author • October 17, 2023

Words as pictures - Southwest Chinese Naxi manuscripts

In the second half of the 19th century, when European colonial powers were still mapping Asian river valleys, explorers and missionaries accidentally discovered a kind of picture-writing still in use by tribes in southwest China. These tribes would be grouped under one official umbrella: Naxi.

Guest author • May 02, 2023

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