Al Azhar online draws international traffic

The online service provides global visitors access to, and benefits from thousands of its rare manuscripts.

Mohamad Tokan, the first subscriber of Al Azhar online, praised the efforts of HH Sheikh Mohammed IT Education Project (ITEP) to preserve Al Azhar's priceless manuscripts and promote the Arab and Islamic heritage.

"The best thing about this project is that it gives everyone a chance to read and appreciate the rare and distinctive Islamic Culture of the past. And since I'm keen to know all about Islamic Sufism, I can find all the rare references online at Al Azhar," said Tokan, an IT engineer at Engineering House in Amman, Jordan, who despite his technical background is passionate about Arabic and Islamic heritage in general and Islamic Sufism in particular.

Launched last month, Al Azhar has 1.5 million hits and more than 36000 visitors, in less than one month. Interestingly, 60 percent of the hits are from the US.

When subscribing to Al Azhar online, scholars, researchers and millions across the world will be able to view rare manuscripts that would otherwise have been inaccessible. Moreover, subscribers of www.alazharonline.org will be able to download digital copies of several priceless manuscripts. CDs of the manuscripts can be also obtained from Al Azhar's online library for a small fee.

"I really loved the service. It is very fast and efficient. The presentation of the website is just amazing. I can see the efforts and hard work behind it," concluded Eng. Tokan

The money generated from the subscription of these services will be used to further the project and preserve these rare manuscripts in a digital format and facilitating greater accessibility to users around the world.

Al Azhar's online library contains over 27000 manuscripts in 3 million pages that cover 63 fields in science and arts. On completion of the archiving of the rest of Al Azhar's manuscripts - that are over 42000 manuscripts in 7 million pages - it will be the largest manuscript website on the Internet and the first of its kind in the world.