✖Here you can explore some general information about the project. See also Beta maṣāḥəft institutional web page. Select About to meet the project team and our partners. Visit the Guidelines section to learn about our encoding principles. The section Data contains the Linked Open Data information, and API the Application Programming Interface documentation for those who want to exchange data with the Beta maṣāḥǝft project. The Permalinks section documents the versioning and referencing earlier versions of each record.
Click to get back to the home page. Here you can find out more about the project team, the cooperating projects, and the contact information. You can also visit our institutional page. Find out more about our Encoding Guidelines. In this section our Linked Open Data principles are explained. Developers can find our Application Programming Interface documentation here. The page documents the use of permalinks by the project.
✖Descriptions of (predominantly) Christian manuscripts from Ethiopia and Eritrea are the core of the Beta maṣāḥǝft project. We (1) gradually encode descriptions from printed catalogues, beginning from the historical ones, (2) incorporate digital descriptions produced by other projects, adjusting them wherever possible, and (3) produce descriptions of previously unknown and/or uncatalogued manuscripts. The encoding follows the TEI XML standards (check our guidelines).
Shelf marks (full list)Manuscripts (search)List of Digitized ManuscriptsCatalogues EncodedInscriptions
✖We identify each unit of content in every manuscript. We consider any text with an independent circulation a work, with its own identification number within the Clavis Aethiopica (CAe). Parts of texts (e.g. chapters) without independent circulation (univocally identifiable by IDs assigned within the records) or recurrent motifs as well as documentary additional texts (identified as Narrative Units) are not part of the CAe. You can also check the list of different types of text titles or various Indexes available from the top menu.
Clavis Aethiopica (Works)Narrative UnitsStudies
The clavis is a repertory of all known works relevant for the Ethiopian and Eritrean tradition; the work being defined as any text with an independent circulation. Each work (as well as known recensions where applicable) receives a unique identifier in the Clavis Aethiopica (CAe). In the filter search offered here one can search for a work by its title, a keyword, a short quotation, but also directly by its CAe identifier - or, wherever known and provided, identifier used by other claves, including Bibliotheca Hagiographica Graeca (BHG), Clavis Patrum Graecorum (CPG), Clavis Coptica (CC), Clavis Apocryphorum Veteris Testamenti (CAVT), Clavis Apocryphorum Novi Testamenti (CANT), etc. The project additionally identifies Narrative Units to refer to text types, where no clavis identification is possible or necessary. Recurring motifs or also frequently documentary additiones are assigned a Narrative Unit ID, or thematically clearly demarkated passages from various recensions of a larger work. This list view shows the documentary collections encoded by the project Ethiopian Manuscript Archives (EMA) and its successor EthioChrisProcess - Christianization and religious interactions in Ethiopia (6th-13th century) : comparative approaches with Nubia and Egypt, which aim to edit the corpus of administrative acts of the Christian kingdom of Ethiopia, for medieval and modern periods. See also the list of documents contained in the additiones in the manuscripts described by the Beta maṣāḥǝft project . Works of interest to Ethiopian and Eritrean studies.
✖While encoding manuscripts, the project Beta maṣāḥǝft aims at creating an exhaustive repertory of art themes and techniques present in Ethiopian and Eritrean Christian tradition. See our encoding guidelines for details. Two types of searches for aspects of manuscript decoration are possible, the decorations filtered search and the general keyword search.
Index of decorationsArt KeywordsIlluminations
The filtered search for decorations, originally designed with Jacopo Gnisci, looks at decorations and their features only. The filters on the left are relative only to the selected features, reading the legends will help you to figure out what you can filter. For example you can search for all encoded decorations of a specific art theme, or search the encoded legends. If the decorations are present, but not encoded, you will not get them in the results. If an image is available, you will also find a thumbnail linking to the image viewer. [NB: The Index of Decorations currently often times out, we are sorry for the inconvenience.] You can search for particular motifs or aspects, including style, also through the keyword search. Just click on "Art keywords" and "Art themes" on the left to browse through the options. This is a short cut to a search for all those manuscripts which have miniatures of which we have images.
✖We create metadata for all places associated with the manuscript production and circulation as well as those mentioned in the texts used by the project. The encoding of places in Beta maṣāḥǝft will thus result in a Gazetteer of the Ethiopian tradition. We follow the principles established by Pleiades and lined out in the Syriaca.org TEI Manual and Schema for Historical Geography which allow us to distinguish between places, locations, and names of places. See also Help page fore more guidance.
PlacesRepositories
This tab offers a filtrable list of all available places. Geographical references of the type "land inhabited by people XXX" is encoded with the reference to the corresponding Ethnic unit (see below); ethnonyms, even those used in geographical contexts, do not appear in this list. Repositories are those locations where manuscripts encoded by the project are or used to be preserved. While they are encoded in the same way as all places are, the view offered is different, showing a list of manuscripts associated with the repository.
✖We create metadata for all persons (and groups of persons) associated with the manuscript production and circulation (rulers, religious authorities, scribes, donors, and commissioners) as well as those mentioned in the texts used by the project. The result will be a comprehensive Prosopography of the Ethiopian and Eritrean tradition. See also Help page for more guidance.
Persons and groupsEthnic units
We encode persons according to our Encoding Guidelines. The initial list was inherited from the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, and there are still many inconsistencies that we are trying to gradually fix. We consider ethnonyms as a subcategory of personal names, even when many are often used in literary works in the context of the "land inhabited by **". The present list of records has been mostly inherited from the Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, and there are still many inconsistencies that we are trying to gradually fix.
✖This section collects some additional resources offered by the project. Select Bibliography to explore the references cited in the project records. The Indexes list different types of project records (persons, places, titles, keywords, etc). Visit Projects for information on partners that have input data directly in the Beta maṣāḥǝft database. Special ways of exploring the data are offered under Visualizations. Two applications were developed in cooperation with the project TraCES, the Gǝʿǝz Morphological Parser and the Online Lexicon Linguae Aethiopicae.
BibliographyIndexesProjectsVisualizationsGǝʿǝz Morphological ParserOnline Lexicon Linguae Aethiopicae
Help

You are looking at work in progress version of this website. For questions contact the dev team.

Hover on words to see search options.

Double-click to see morphological parsing.

Click on left pointing hands and arrows to load related items and click once more to view the result in a popup.

You can run a simple search which will look in all text indexes. This is the simplest search that we can offer. Check the options below the input box if you want to change the default settings.

Note that you can click on and/or symbols under the search field for additional filters/facets and on to activate the virtual keyboard.

When the results appear you can use facets to narrow your selection. For that, first select the facet (Item type, Author of changes, Keywords, etc.) and then press "refine search results ". Here you can get a list of items given some parameters, like the entity type, without searching for a string. You can play with the filters to restrict the search and you can certainly combine these with a text search. If you know the identifier (ID) of an item (LIT1234name, MS123abc, PRS12345name, etc.) you can paste it here, and you will get it in the results. if you know only a part, eg. LIT20... it will give you all those which match. To reach a given item with its ID, you can also append that to the base URL of the website, https://betamasaheft.eu/LIT1234name and you will be redirected to the correct landing page. If you have at hand the Clavis Aethiopica number of a Textual Unit, e.g. CAe 1234, you can enter it here and the search will point you to that record. We record (unsystematically) corresponding identifiers from other Claves, like CAVT or CANT, here you can select which one you want to look for and search for records pointing to that. We record for each repository information on settlement, region and country. By searching for the identifier of a place the query will look at related places and check for other repositories which may be associated. If you know how to write your XPath, and know the source TEI (available for each file, by appending .xml to the identifier of the record) you will be able to run that query against the db here. Not all possible paths are optimized. Parallel to the XML, also an RDF triple store is maintained by the project. Here you get an interface to the SPARQL endpoint. You can add your SPARQL query and see the results available.
In the search mask above, you can search for text, below there are options and you can add filters ( ). You can then use facets to narrow your selection.
But text is not all you can search for. In the top menu you can switch to other types of queries and searches which rely on different indexes and data formats. You can check this box to use 'smart' ranking, where a higher score is assigned to hits in placeName, persName, title or to records with text or an occupation element. This will make you wait a bit more. If running a text search, you can select the type of text search. This determines how the single words which you enter are matched in the indexes here By default the search will use OR as an operator, which means that if you search two words you will get hits which contain one OR the other. You may wish to use AND to get the matches which contain your first word AND your second word. If you want them in that particular order, consider using phrase mode from the search type. Click on this plus button to see a series of additional options for your search. If you wish to search for a given word in the hands descriptions and another word in the decorations, here you can do that, using fields. This may help you enter characters which are not immediately present on your keyboard. Keep a letter pressed for additional forms. Use Shift and Alt for alternative keyboards. Instead of the pointer you can use your own keyboard with these values when active. Homophones are mechanically replaced for you, so that for example, if you search for one of 'ሀ', 'ሐ', 'ኀ', 'ሃ', 'ሓ', 'ኃ' we will search for all of them. If you deselect this checkbox the list of homophones will not be considered and only the exact string you searched will be passed on. Homophones are not replaced for search strings longer than 10 characters and is not applied in all modes. If you entered a search string for a Gǝʿǝz string, either typing it in Fidal or in a transliteration format, we can try to convert it and search also the other form. If you entered ወልደ the search engine will look also for walda. If you entered walda also for ወልደ. This depends on the availability of the alternate form.

You can enter above your SPARQL query to the RDF representation of the data stored in Apache Jena Fuseki. Please use single quotes ' not double.

PREFIXes are already there (see below), so you can start with SELECT. If you prefer to use your prefixes, do so, no problem. A super tutorial on how to build SPARQL queries is here at Apache Jena.

Results do not have facets and are presented as they are requested in the query from the SPARQL response.



PREFIX rdf: <http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#>
PREFIX rdfs: <http://www.w3.org/2000/01/rdf-schema#>
PREFIX lawd: <http://lawd.info/ontology/>
PREFIX oa: <http://www.w3.org/ns/oa#>
PREFIX ecrm: <http://erlangen-crm.org/current/>
PREFIX crm: <http://www.cidoc-crm.org/cidoc-crm/>
PREFIX gn: <http://www.geonames.org/ontology#>
PREFIX agrelon: <http://d-nb.info/standards/elementset/agrelon.owl#>
PREFIX rel: <http://purl.org/vocab/relationship/>
PREFIX dcterms: <http://purl.org/dc/terms/>
PREFIX bm: <https://betamasaheft.eu/>
PREFIX pelagios: <http://pelagios.github.io/vocab/terms#>
PREFIX syriaca: <http://syriaca.org/documentation/relations.html#>
PREFIX saws: <http://purl.org/saws/ontology#>
PREFIX snap: <http://data.snapdrgn.net/ontology/snap#>
PREFIX pleiades: <https://pleiades.stoa.org/>
PREFIX wd: <https://www.wikidata.org/>
PREFIX dc: <http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/>
PREFIX skos: <http://www.w3.org/2004/02/skos/core#>
PREFIX xsd: <http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#>
PREFIX t: <http://www.tei-c.org/ns/1.0>
PREFIX sdc: <https://w3id.org/sdc/ontology#>
PREFIX foaf: <http://xmlns.com/foaf/0.1/>

You can also use the API to query the SPARQL endpoint, using https://betamasaheft.eu/api/SPARQL with the query in a parameter q. The results are SPARQL Query Results XML Format, as the one visualized below.

In the Beta maṣāḥǝft Guidelines you can find the OWLDoc Documentation and a visualization thanks to webVOWL of the current ontology developed with Protégé.

Some examples of the data you are querying

Documentation on Linked Open Data can be found here.

Examples:
Search for female donors: "SELECT ?ms ?person WHERE { ?annotation a bm:donor ; oa:hasBody ?person ; oa:hasTarget ?ms . ?ms a bm:mss . ?person foaf:gender 'female' . } "
Manuscripts with a patron of the imperial family: "SELECT DISTINCT ?manuscript ?patron ?relation ?ruler WHERE{ ?annotation a bm:patron ; oa:hasTarget ?manuscript ; oa:hasBody ?patron . ?manuscript a bm:mss . ?patron snap:hasBond ?bondName . ?bondName rdf:type ?relation ; snap:bond-with ?ruler . ?ruler snap:occupation 'Emperor' . }"
Mountains mentioned in Liturgy manuscripts: "SELECT DISTINCT ?mountain ?manuscript WHERE { ?att oa:hasBody ?mountain ; oa:hasTarget ?manuscript . ?manuscript a bm:mss ; a bm:Liturgy . ?mountain a bm:place ; pleiades:hasFeatureType in <https://betamasaheft.eu/authority-files/mountain> . } LIMIT 50"

The results presented here are visualized with d3sparql

Enter above your XPath 3.0 query to the data. (You can alternatively use the old XPath search page here) Please, use t: namespace for TEI elements. The starting point of any Xpath should be $config:collection-root if you are searching the entire dataset.

NB: if you are a member of the BM GitHub organization and work with Oxygen you may run your XPath Queries directly in your Oxygen project; in this case start the string directly with //TEI.

You can also use, as a cached and short form to point to collections the following variables: $config:collection-rootMS for manuscripts; $config:collection-rootW for Textual Units $config:collection-rootPl for places; $config:collection-rootPr for persons; $config:collection-rootIn for repositories; $config:collection-rootA for authority files.

Examples:
Persons marked up in colophons: $config:collection-rootMS//t:colophon[t:persName]
Manuscripts with at least 26 additions: $config:collection-rootMS//t:additions/t:list/t:item[@xml:id='a26']
Manuscripts with a text marked up as Amharic: $config:collection-rootMS//t:TEI[descendant::t:textLang[@mainLang='am' or @otherLangs='am']]
Manuscripts with additions that contain something tagged Amharic: $config:collection-rootMS//t:TEI[not(contains(@xml:id, 'IHA'))]//t:additions[descendant::t:*[@xml:lang='am']]
Records with the title with the subtype inscriptio: $config:collection-root//t:title[contains(@subtype,'inscriptio')]
Manuscripts that have at least 31 quires: $config:collection-rootMS//t:collation/t:list[count(t:item) ge 31]
Manuscripts where a roleName appears: $config:collection-rootMS//t:roleName
Additons of the type OwnershipNote: $config:collection-rootMS//t:additions/t:list/t:item[t:desc[@type='OwnershipNote']]
Place records revised in 2022: $config:collection-rootPl//t:revisionDesc/t:change[contains(concat(' ', @when, ' '), '2022')]
Work records that contain "Senodos" inside title: $config:collection-rootW//t:titleStmt/t:title[contains(.,'Senodos')]
Works that contain the string "Senodos" somewhere: $config:collection-rootW//*[contains(.,'Senodos')]
Person record which have at least some attribute for birth and death (can be when, notBefore, notAfter) elements and occupation type ruler: $config:collection-rootPr//t:person[t:birth[@*]][t:death[@*]][t:occupation[@type='ruler']]
Manuscripts with miniatures in them: $config:collection-rootMS//t:decoDesc[t:decoNote[@type='miniature']]
Manuscripts with an addition element typed Ownership Note followed by another one with type Supplication: $config:collection-rootMS//t:additions/t:list/t:item[t:desc[@type='OwnershipNote']][following-sibling::t:item[t:desc[@type='Supplication']]]

Here you can differentiate your search by looking at the text of constructed strings from specific portions of the data. You can search for records which have a word occurring in the decoration and another in the content description, for example.















Resource type
manuscript5
General
Adday Hernández3
Irmeli Perho1
Michele Petrone1
Pietro Maria Liuzzo5
2019-03-275
2018-01-041
2018-02-061
2018-02-161
2018-03-022
2018-03-051
2018-03-141
2018-06-011
2018-08-211
2018-08-271
2017-03-061
2017-03-161
2017-04-031
2017-04-041
2017-04-051
2017-04-061
2017-04-181
2017-04-191
2017-04-202
2017-04-211
2017-04-241
2017-04-251
2017-05-161
2017-05-172
2017-07-141
2017-08-302
2017-11-011
2017-11-131
2017-11-141
2017-11-151
2017-11-221
2017-11-241
2016-07-071
2016-07-181
2016-11-041
2016-11-071
2016-11-081
2016-11-091
2016-11-101
2016-11-151
2015-04-241
2015-04-271
2015-06-261
2015-07-251
Arabic5
English5
Manuscripts
IslHornAfr: Islam in the Horn of Africa3
acephalous1
acephalous lacunous1
apodous1
lacunous1
ابكار الافكار في مدح النبي المختار1
تائية1
تخميس الفيومي على البردة3
تخميس القصيدة الإياضية1
تخميس نظم فليتك تحلو والحياة مريرة1
تخميس نظم ما ارسل الرحمان5
تنبيه الانام, Bāb fī ẓuhūrihi wa-ʻalāmatihi1
خطبة المولد1
دعاء الاستمطار لرحمة العزيز1
دعاء ختم المولد الشريف اللهم انا قد حضرنا1
زاد المعاد فى معارضة بانت سعاد1
شرح الشفاء, Faṣl fī bayān mā huwa fī maqālāt kufr1
عقد الجوهر في مولد النبي الازهر2
عنوان الشريف2
فتح البصائر بمدح غذاء الاكابر1
قصيدة البدماصية في مدح النبي1
قصيدة التوسل1
قصيدة اللامية الشقراطسية1
قصيدة الهائية بمدح خير البرية وبمدح خضر ولي الله1
قصيدة الهمزية في مدح خير البرية2
قصيدة الوترية في مدح خير البرية1
قصيدة ا يرجع لى قرب الحبيب المعاهد1
قصيدة بروق الحمى ابرقي يا بروق2
قصيدة سفينة النجا لسيد بشرى2
قصيدة سكن الفؤاد فعش هنيئا يا جسد1
قصيدة فريدة الاعد عن وصف الديار المواىل1
قصيدة قفا برياض الشعب شعب القنفل1
قصيدة مطولة على غرار بانت سعاد1
قصيدة هم الاحبة ان جازوا وان عدلوا1
قصيده بمناسبة مولد النبى صلى الله عليه وسلم1
مختصر الحلية لمن في المختصرات بغية1
مدح النبي أبتدئ بسم الكريم2
مدح النبي اذا زمزم الحادى بذكرك اوحدا1
مدح النبي اطالب حصر الوصف فى مدح احمد1
مدح النبي الا انما الدنيا كظبى وذا الورى1
مدح النبي الهى على كل الامور لك الحمد1
مدح النبي ا هزلا وقد جدت بك اللمة الشمطا1
مدح النبي تقدم قبل الركب دمعى لسبقا1
مدح النبي ذر العجز وانهض خائضا للمعارك1
مدح النبي رأي الركائب تحدى فانثنى كلفا1
مدح النبي سقى الله بالبطحاء ربعا مكللا1
مدح النبي سلام كعرف الروض اخضله الذدى1
مدح النبي ظهرت رسول الله من ينكر الضحى1
مدح النبي عذ بمفتاح الكمال المفرد1
مدح النبي فيا مزمل ويا مدثر1
مدح النبي قلب المحب عن العذال مشغول1
مدح النبي كملت بنعت محمد خير الورى1
مدح النبي لقد ذقت منكم فى الزمان الذى مرا1
مدح النبي نعم قد بلغت القصد فانتظر الوعدا1
مدح النبي هناؤكم يا اهل طيبة قد حفا1
مدح النبي ولما اتينا قبر احمد1
مدح النبي ونحمد مولانا على عظم شأنه1
مدح النبي ياربع طيبة لا ضاقت بكل الحال1
مدح النبي يا من الله بعزه الشفع1
مديح اليك رسول الله جبنا الفلا وخدا1
معارضة بانت سعاد للنبهاني1
مولد شرف العالمين1
نظم ابتدئ مدح احمد بعون الله الصمد2
نظم اسمعوا وفقتمو من اخ ينصحكمو2
نظم اسمعوا يا كرام2
نظم اشرق البدر علينا من ثنيات الوداع1
نظم اشرق شمس الهدايا2
نظم البديع في مولد النبي الشفيع1
نظم المجد نعل والمعالي شركاه1
نظم الهي اغفر لنا ذنوبا2
نظم الهي بانوارك اللامعة1
نظم الهي باياتك البينات2
نظم اليك يا رب قد فوضت1
نظم ايها العاصي لأمر الالاه1
نظم بجاه النبي المصطفى1
نظم بذات علي على جده2
نظم بسم الله فى النظم ابتدئ2
نظم بمناسبة مولد النبي1
نظم خير البرية من حاف ومنتعل1
نظم سرور قلبي حب الله1
نظم شافعنا الى المولى1
نظم طلع البدر علينا2
نظم عليك مريح الحق بالحق ينزل1
نظم قبله المريض ما له يئيض1
نظم كاذا عدا الركب حتى حنث الابل1
نظم كرر محامد خير المرسلين1
نظم لك الحمد يا ذا الجود والمجد والعلا1
نظم ليس بعد السبعين الا الرحيل1
نظم مدائح خير الخلق اسنى الوسائل1
نظم مديحه اليوم تفضيل لقائله1
نظم من حدى شوقا1
نظم هبوا لي من فضلكم هبوا لي2
نظم هل فى البروق عن الاحباب تعليل1
نظم وراموا شفيعا1
نظم وسهل الأخلاص فى الأعمال1
نظم وكلامك القديم وكتابك المبين1
نظم ولد الحبيب ومثله لا يولد1
نظم يا حبذا المسجد1
نظم يا رب صل المختار من مضر1
عبد الله محمد كبير الأحمدي5
محمد بن علي مراح5
Codex5
no5
paper5
03
301
721
05
05
181
371
41
611
71
05
05
181
371
41
611
71
no5
Agaro Šayḫ Kamal2
IES - Institute of Ethiopian Studies1
Limmū-Ghannat1
Warukko1
الشيخ الحاج محمد حبيب1
طيب بن علي1
محمد صالح بن اصحاب بن نور1
Arabic5
only metadata5
gregorian1
hijri1
Textual and Narrative Units
only metadata5
Places and Repositories
Persons and Groups
13731
19751
13371
18761
1337-04-191
n/a5
individual5

There are 5 entities matching your text query for "" with the parameters shown at the right. (searched: )

Search time: 1.78 seconds.
mode: anytitletext: https://betamasaheft.eu/LIT0508IHAsearchType: textwork-types: mss
    title
    hits count
    first three keywords in context
    item-type specific options
    stubmanuscriptsIHA0117TEI
    Addis Ababa, IES - Institute of Ethiopian Studies, IES05517
    0 in
    Signatures
    IES05517, AAIE05517
    Short Description
    This paper codex is composed of leaves. It has 61 main content units in 1 codicological unit. Available dates of origin in the description: . There are The description does not include a collation of the quires.
    placespersonsrelations

    List of related persons

    stubmanuscriptsIHA1285TEI
    Agaro / Aggārō, Agaro Šayḫ Kamal, SHK00003
    0 in
    Signatures
    SHK00003, AGSK00003
    Short Description
    This paper codex is composed of leaves. It has 37 main content units in 1 codicological unit. Available dates of origin in the description: . There are The description does not include a collation of the quires.
    placespersonsrelations

    List of related persons

    stubmanuscriptsIHA1368TEI
    Agaro / Aggārō, Agaro Šayḫ Kamal, SHK00095
    0 in
    Signatures
    SHK00095, AGSK00095
    Short Description
    This paper codex is composed of leaves. It has 18 main content units in 1 codicological unit. Available dates of origin in the description: . There are The description does not include a collation of the quires.
    placespersonsrelations

    List of related persons

    stubmanuscriptsIHA0619TEI
    Limmū Ghannat / Limmu Genet / Suntu, Limmū-Ghannat, LMG00016
    0 in
    Signatures
    LMG00016, LGLG00016
    Short Description
    This paper codex is composed of leaves. It has 7 main content units in 1 codicological unit. Available dates of origin in the description: . There are The description does not include a collation of the quires.
    placespersonsrelations

    List of related persons

    stubmanuscriptsIHA0850TEI
    Waarukko / Warukko, Warukko, WRK00047
    0 in
    Signatures
    WRK00047, WAWA00047
    Short Description
    This paper codex is composed of leaves. It has 4 main content units in 1 codicological unit. Available dates of origin in the description: . There are The description does not include a collation of the quires.
    placespersonsrelations

    List of related persons