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During the fourteen centuries of its history, Islamic civilization has produced a vast number works, mostly in Arabic and Persian, but also in Turkish, Urdu, Bengali, Malay, Swahili and other languages.
These works number over two million and cover practically every field of human thought from Quranic commentary to jurisprudence, from philosophy and theology to art, mathematics to botany, form poetry and geography to technology. They were produced throughout the Islamic world, from western China and the Malay archipelago to Andalusia and the Maghreb.
Today, Islamic manuscripts are to be found not only in every Islamic country and countries with large minorities such as India, central Asia and China but also throughout Europe and the Americas, as well in Japan and some non-Muslim African countries. There are very few countries in the world in there are not at some Islamic manuscripts.
This enormous, the most valuable intellectual and scholarly heritage in Islam, is – in many ways – in danger of being destroyed through social upheavals and political conflicts, or simply disintegrating and fading away due to natural causes or simply lack of proper care and attention.
In response to the urgent need for this heritage to be documented as soon as possible and for way to be found to preserve it posterity, al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation was established in 1988 by the Yamani Cultural Foundation, set up by Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani.
Based in London, al-Furqan draws on the help and co-operation of scholars and experts in various areas of Islamic studies throughout the world.