First Yemeni manuscript in Leiden collection

This is a biography of an Ottoman governor who ruled Yemen in the late six-teenth century. It was composed for him, in Arabic, by a Yemeni Zaydi author. The Ottomans connected Yemen to a bigger world, and one element that allows us to see this is that manuscripts in Yemen started to be written on imported European paper. This volume was produced in Yemen, in the fort city of Kaw-kabān, near the capital Sanaa. It then followed the Ottoman governor, for whom it was composed, back to Istanbul. It became part of the Leiden University Collection through the efforts of Levinus Warner (d. 1665), a Dutch diplomat in the Ottoman Empire and collector of manuscripts. This makes it the first Yemeni manuscript to enter this collection.

ʿĀmir b. Muḥammad ad-Duʿāmī, ar- Rawḍ al-Ḥasan fī Akhbār Siyar [...] al-Bāśā Ḥasan, p. 1-2 (Or. 477)