ITP Conference Grant awarded to Mohamed Ahmed Mohamed Mohamed Abd el-Salam (Egypt, ITP Fellow 2013)

Written by Claire Messenger, Manager, International Training Programme

We are delighted to announce that an ITP Conference Grant 2023 has been awarded to Mohamed Ahmed Mohamed Mohamed Abd el-Salam (Egypt, ITP Fellow 2013)

Mohamed, who is currently Assistant Professor of Archaeology & Museum Studies, at Archaeology Faculty, Ain Shams University in Cairo will be using his support grant to travel to the University of Copenhagen, Denmark from 19 -21 April 2023 for the 19th seminar on the Care and Conservation of Manuscripts.

At the conference, Mohamed has been asked to speak and will present a paper on ‘The Collection Management of Islamic Manuscripts at the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo…..Study for Conservation and Digitization’

Mohamed has chosen Islamic Manuscripts at the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo (MIA) for his research project and hopes that the conference will support his deeper consideration of the manuscripts collections at MIA which will, in turn, help him to understand the ideal way forward for the conservation, classification, and cataloging of (MIA) manuscripts.

The Islamic Manuscripts at the Museum of Islamic Art in Cairo includes over 2700 manuscripts, which cover the eastern and western Islamic World through all ages of Islamic history. In addition to the Arabic, Persian and Turkish manuscripts, MIA preserves manuscripts in other oriental languages. Among these are texts in Sanskrit, Syriac, Mongolian, Samaritan, Armenian, Bengali, Hebrew and Hindi. One

language is often represented by only a single, very important, volume. The collection also includes at least eight Ethiopian, ten Hebrew and thirteen Javanese manuscripts as well as eleven volumes written in Sanskrit. So, it will be perfect choice as a case study for cataloging and ensuring the basics of conservation and digitization take place.

Since his participation on the ITP Annual Programme 2013, Mohamed has remained an active member of the ITP global network. In 2015, Mohamed wrote for the ITP Newsletter Issue 2 and shared a profile on his wonderful museum, the Islamic Art Museum in Cairo.

In 2016 Mohamed was awarded a research fellowship by the State Museums of Dresden (SKD) where he worked for six weeks on a project entitled Expanding Horizons: Tracing heavenly machines form the Arab-Islamic World.

Mohamed also attended an Egyptian ITP Fellow reunion held at the British Embassy in Cairo, in April 2018.

We are delighted to be able to support Mohamed to attend and speak at the conference in Copenhagen and look forward to him sharing his experience with the wider ITP network.