All of these documents arrived at the CSIC Library in the middle years of the last century and are considered highly significant as having been written by Sephardic Jews: most of them are of Italian Sephardic origin or come from the North of Morocco. Their cataloging was included in the Catalogue of Hebrew Manuscripts of the Madrid Community, vol. III, carried out by Francisco Javier del Barco and published in 2006. The restoration of this collection for the Manuscript@CSIC project has mainly been the responsibility of the IPCE (Institute of Spanish Cultural Heritage) for the Manuscript@CSIC project.

The collection of Aljamiado manuscripts kept in the current Tomás Navarro Tomás Library of the Spanish National Research Council (previously the Philology Library of the CSIC) is the largest of these collections. In this library, we can find 42 Aljamiado codices, out of a total of 75 in all – the rest are in Arabic, in addition to loose leaves. This collection is also the most important since, apart from the ten codices of different origin and dates, the set of 42 Aljamiado manuscripts, 23 Arabic codices and the archives of loose documents together constitute a collection. This unity is due to the origin of their materials, as the original corpus was hidden in the false ceiling of a house in Almonacid de la Sierra (Zaragoza) at the beginning of the 17th century and was found in 1884. The two codices found in the Escuelas Pías of Zaragoza also belonged to this collection.

Ever since it was acquired by the Junta de Ampliación de Estudios in the first decade of the 20th century and then later on by the CSIC, this collection has always attracted the interest of scientists and librarians specialised in the preservation of original documents and dissemination of texts. In 1912, Julián Ribera and Miguel Asín published the first description of it, and in the mid-eighties the collection was processed into microfilm. In1998, the library, then known as the Library of the Institute of Philology of the CSIC (currently the Tomás Navarro Tomás Library) made the wise decision to digitalize the collection from the microfilms, recording the copies and publishing them on four compact discs. In addition to these collections, the Tomás Navarro Tomás Library also holds a set of ten Arabic and three Persian codices. These documents are of different origin and are more recent, dating mainly from the 19th and 20th centuries. Neither these documents nor the Hebrew manuscripts have previously been digitialized.

On this occasion the digitalizing process has been carried out with the very latest technology in order to guarantee a better-quality image and new applications for all the documents included in this project.

There were also a few references to the collection in the catalogue of Manuscritos árabes y fondo antiguo de la Escuela de Estudios Arabes : exposición con motivo del 75 Aniversario de la fundación de la Escuela de Estudios Árabes (CSIC) (2007-2008).

The collection contains essentially religious works, although there are also some documents on law, literature, lexicography, grammar and poetry.

The collection contains essentially religious works, but there are also some works on law, literature, lexicography, grammar, poetry, and Cabala.

Some of the manuscripts have received scholarly attention. This is prominently the case with Ibn Luyūn’s (d. 1348) Treatise of Agriculture  of [ms14], which is considered of great bibliographic, scientific and patrimonial value. Because of its relevance in the field of agricultural studies it has been studied by many Spanish and non-Spanish specialists, and has been selected as an exceptional piece for a number of exhibitions within Spain. Other manuscripts of the collection have been the subject of PhD dissertations, including the copies of Ibn Nubāta’s Sharḥ al-ʿuyūn fī sharḥ Risālat Ibn Zaydūn[ms12] and Ibn Abī Zayd al-Qayrawānī’s Jumla mukhtaṣara min wājib umūr al-diyāna[ms7], whilst the fragment of Ibn Khaldūn’s Muqaddima [ms16] has been edited as a facsimile by the Legado Andalusí foundation.

Furthermore, important codicological studies have been carried out by specialists in restoration, who have analysed the bindings and paper of the dated manuscripts. In this respect, ms9 –which contains the grammatical compendium written by Muḥammad b. al-Ḥasan al-Zubaydī under the title Kitāb al-Wāḍiḥ– constitutes an important exemplar, its structure reflecting the transition between Arabic and Mudéjar bindings.

The collection from the Granados Montoro family originally comes from Morocco. According to the scientific assessment kept at the EEA Archive, it is a clear example of the cultural situation in 19th-century North Africa. The Granados Montoro collection contains some of the most widespread works during that period, which cover all fields of knowledge: law, logic, grammar, religion, Qurʾan, etc. As stated in the appraisal report, these works have had a great influence on the development of Maghrebi culture, which is the reason why they were profusely copied and edited. From a documentary perspective, the following manuscripts stand out:

• Al-ʿIqd al-munaẓẓam ofIbn Salmūn [ms31], one of the most significant Andalusi notarial forms.


• The Alfiyya of Ibn Mālik [ms28]. , well-known grammatical work in verse.


• Al-Durr al-nafīs fī uns al-ẓāʿin wa-l-jalīs [ms42], treatise on the first conquests of Islam by an unknown author whose value mainly lies in the fact that it compiles the works attributed to al-Wāqidī and Aḥmad b. Muḥammad al-Ṭalamankī.