✖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
manuscript8
General
Augustine Dickinson1
Denis Nosnitsin3
Dorothea Reule4
Eugenia Sokolinski1
Massimo Villa3
Pietro Maria Liuzzo1
Solomon Gebreyes1
2024-03-221
2020-06-111
2020-09-021
2020-12-151
2019-02-041
2019-04-011
2018-02-261
2018-02-281
2017-03-281
2017-09-011
2017-09-081
2017-10-111
2017-12-192
2016-05-101
2016-11-021
2016-12-021
2015-07-131
2010-07-141
2007-12-101
Leaf string marker1
Other1
Gondarine2
Postaksumite I1
Postaksumite II3
Zamana Masāfǝnt1
Amharic Literature1
Apocrypha2
Bible1
Christian Literature6
Chronography1
Hagiography1
Liturgy4
Miracle2
Missal4
New Testament1
Old Testament1
Poetry1
Prayers3
Translation1
Amharic2
Arabic1
English4
Gǝʿǝz 8
Latin 2
Syriac 1
Tigrinya 1
Manuscripts
Leaf string markers1
leather6
textile1
wood5
Aethiopici4
Beta maṣāḥǝft1
d'Abbadie1
Ethio-SPaRe1
Ethiopic1
Fonds éthiopien1
Manuscrits orientaux1
كتب مقدسة1
12
27
complete8
incomplete4
deficient1
good5
Anaphora of Our Lord Jesus Christ1
Anaphora of the Apostles1
Anaphoras1
ʾArgānona wǝddāse1
Bǝsrāta Mātewos1
Bǝsrāta Yoḥannǝs1
Common of the Office1
Epistle to the Colossians1
First Epistle of Peter1
First Epistle to the Corinthians1
Gǝbra ḥawāryāt1
Gospel of John1
Litanies for the morning1
Māḫbara mǝʾmanān1
Maṣḥafa qǝddāse4
On the length of the day during the months of the year1
Ordinary of the mass and Anaphora of the Apostles1
Prayer of thanksgiving for the offering of the incense1
Prayers for the night1
Prayers for the twilight1
Prayers of Incense, of Egypt1
Prayers of the morning1
Psalter1
Taʾammǝra Māryām1
14991
15991
16991
17771
17991
19491
14001
15001
16001
17061
17501
18501
281
861
٢٨1
ʾabbā Warada Qāl1
Walatta Ṗeṭros1
ወለተ፡ ጴጥሮስ፡1
Codex8
1551
1571
1702
1972
211
2611
١٥٥1
no7
yes1
Leaf string markers1
parchment8
02
21
41
52
92
07
21
11
22
221
31
42
91
16
21
31
03
101
151
181
221
251
08
141
171
331
341
401
451
51
671
1+189+21
1001
134.01
137 (II + 135)1
1651
1861
1981
81
I-II+761
i-ii+841
١-٢ + ٨٤ ورقة1
no7
yes1
ʾAsir Matirā1
Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana4
Bibliothèque nationale de France1
Dayr as-Suryān1
Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg1
1A-1A-1A1A/0-0/0-0/C2
Ruling pattern: 1A-1A-1A1A/0-0/0-0/C.1
ʾEwosṭātewos1
Gabra ʾIyasus1
More than 1 PRS11523Qawestos1
No item: PRS14381Fanta1
Qawǝsṭos1
Śarṣa Madḫǝn1
ገብረ፡ ኢየሱስ፡ 1
ጸሐፊሐ፡ ፈንታ፡1
Ethiopic8
only metadata8
bindingMaterial8
drawing1
Endbands2
Other2
SewingStations2
SlipCase1
ethiopian1
CalendaricNote2
Condemnation1
DonationNote2
Doxology1
Excerpt1
Genealogy1
GuestText4
MagicText1
OwnershipNote4
ScribalNoteCommencing1
ScribalSupplication2
Supplication1
Unclear2
Correction1
StampExlibris1
Unclear2
1101
1381
1481
1551
1701
181
1821
1851
١١٠1
131
161
172
192
201
231
9 121
Textual and Narrative Units
only metadata8
Places and Repositories
Persons and Groups
14991
15991
19201
14001
15001
16001
18501
19161
74051
74481
ethnic1
n/a8
individual8

There are 8 entities matching your text query for "" with the parameters shown at the right. (searched: )

Search time: 1.057 seconds.
mode: anytitletext: https://betamasaheft.eu/LIT4859LitanysearchType: textwork-types: mss
    title
    hits count
    first three keywords in context
    item-type specific options
    stubmanuscriptsESam007TEI
    Bǝḥerāwi Kǝllǝlāwi Mangǝśti Tǝgrāy, ʾAsir Matirā, AM-007
    0 in
    Signatures
    AM-007
    Short Description
    This parchment codex is composed of 134.0 leaves. It has 59 main content units in 1 codicological unit. Available dates of origin in the description: . There is 1 hand described with Ethiopic script attested. The description includes a collation of the quires.
    placespersonsrelations

    List of related persons

    stubmanuscriptsDSEthiop2TEI
    Egypt, Dayr as-Suryān, DS Ethiop. 2
    0 in
    Signatures
    DS Ethiop. 2, د س أثيوبي # ٢, مسلسل ٧١٤, Serial Number 714, كتب مقدسة ٩٢٣, Sacred Books 923
    Short Description
    This parchment codex is composed of ١-٢ + ٨٤ ورقة i-ii+84 I-II+76 8 leaves. It has 4 main content units in 2 codicological units. Available dates of origin in the description: النصف الثاني من القرن التاسع عشر / أوائل القرن العشرين Second half of the nineteenth/early twentieth century النصف الثاني من القرن التاسع عشر / أوائل القرن العشرين النصف الثاني من القرن التاسع عشر / أوائل القرن العشرين. There are The description includes a collation of the quires.
    placespersonsrelations

    List of related persons

    stubmanuscriptsFSUor15TEI
    Frankfurt, Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg, Frankfurt Ms. or. 15
    Link to images
    0 in
    Signatures
    Frankfurt Ms. or. 15, Rüpp. III, 3, Goldschmidt 11
    Short Description
    This parchment codex is composed of 165 leaves. It has 41 main content units in 1 codicological unit. Available dates of origin in the description: 1750-1799 ?. There is 1 hand described with Ethiopic script attested. The description includes a collation of the quires.
    placespersonsrelations

    List of related persons

    stubmanuscriptsBNFabb72TEI
    Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, BnF Éthiopien d'Abbadie 72
    0 in
    Signatures
    BnF Éthiopien d'Abbadie 72
    Short Description
    This parchment codex is composed of 1+189+2 leaves. It has 36 main content units in 1 codicological unit. Available dates of origin in the description: 1693 or somewhat later. There are The description includes a collation of the quires.
    placespersonsrelations

    List of related persons

    stubmanuscriptsBAVet116TEI
    Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Aeth. 116
    0 in
    Signatures
    Aeth. 116
    Short Description
    This parchment codex is composed of 198 leaves. It has 29 main content units in 1 codicological unit. Available dates of origin in the description: 1916 when: 1916 . There is 1 hand described with Ethiopic script attested. The description includes a collation of the quires.
    placespersonsrelations

    List of related persons

    stubmanuscriptsBAVet14TEI
    Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Aeth. 14
    0 in
    Signatures
    Aeth. 14
    Short Description
    This parchment codex is composed of 186 leaves. It has 29 main content units in 1 codicological unit. Available dates of origin in the description: 1500-1599. There is 1 hand described with Ethiopic script attested. The description includes a collation of the quires.
    placespersonsrelations

    List of related persons

    stubmanuscriptsBAVet22TEI
    Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Aeth. 22
    0 in
    Signatures
    Aeth. 22
    Short Description
    This parchment codex is composed of 100 leaves. It has 16 main content units in 1 codicological unit. Available dates of origin in the description: 1400-1499. There is 1 hand described with Ethiopic script attested. The description includes a collation of the quires.
    placespersonsrelations

    List of related persons

    No persons related to this manuscripts are known.

    stubmanuscriptsBAVet73TEI
    Vatican City, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, Aeth. 73
    0 in
    Signatures
    Aeth. 73
    Short Description
    This parchment codex is composed of 137 (II + 135) leaves. It has 13 main content units in 1 codicological unit. Available dates of origin in the description: 1600-1699. There is 1 hand described with Ethiopic script attested. The description includes a collation of the quires.
    placespersonsrelations

    List of related persons