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Alphonse Mingana
Image: Public domain · Wikimedia Commons

Alphonse Mingana

ألفونس منغانا

Notable figure 1878–1937 · Source: Johann Fück, Tarikh harakat al-istishraq (Die arabischen Studien in Europa), trans. ʿUmar Lutfi al-ʿAlim, 2nd ed., Dar al-Madar al-Islami, Beirut 2001, p. 288 · Second source: George A. Kiraz, «Mingana, Alphonse (1878–1937) [Chald.]», Gorgias Encyclopedic Dictionary of the Syriac Heritage

Field: Manuscript cataloguing

Affiliation

Cataloguer of the John Rylands Arabic manuscripts (1934)

Biography

A Chaldean Syriac, not an Arab, he was born at Sharansh al-ʿUlya near Zakho, studied Syriac at Mosul and taught it there until 1908, and went to England in 1913. He catalogued the Arabic manuscripts of the John Rylands Library, Manchester (published 1934), then gathered on three journeys the Syriac and Arabic manuscripts that became the Mingana Collection at Birmingham, cataloguing them in three volumes (1933–1939). He also edited ʿAli ibn Rabban al-Tabari's Kitab al-Din wa-l-dawla.