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Paul Ferdinand Gachet. Etching by V. van Gogh, 1890
Paul Ferdinand Gachet (1828-1909) was a maverick physician who practiced what later came to be called complementary or alternative medicine. He had a consulting room in Paris to which he commuted from...
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The Curiepe Drum Dance
This photograph from Venezuela shows men and women dancing in the town of Curiepe. Founded in the early 1700s by liberated slaves, Curiepe is known for its annual San Juan Festival and its famous...
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Persia, Afghanistan and Baluchistan
This 1904 map of Persia (as Iran was then known), Afghanistan, and parts of present-day Pakistan is by the Americana Company of New York, publisher of the Encyclopedia Americana. Also included in the...
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Two Jewish Women Standing, Facing Each Other, in Tunisia
This photograph taken in early 20th-century Tunisia is from the Frank and Frances Carpenter Collection at the Library of Congress. Frank G. Carpenter (1855-1924) was an American writer of books on...
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New and Precise Depiction of the Southern Part of America, Which Includes:...
This folding map of South America and the West Indies, printed on two separate sheets, with uncut margins, was engraved for the second edition of the fourth part of Hulsius' collection of voyages,...
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Map of the Straits of Magellan and Part of the Land of Fire, Prepared in 1786
This composite map of the 1785-86 scientific expedition to the Strait of Magellan under the command of Antonio de Córdoba (1740?-1811) represents the first comprehensive study of the region. The map...
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7th War Loan. Now--All Together
C.C. Beall (1892-1967) was a commercial illustrator who drew comics and book covers. He based the image on this World War II war loan poster on the famous Joe Rosenthal photograph of the second...
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Flowers of Avicenna
Abū ‘Alī al-Husayn ibn ‘Abd Allāh ibn Sīnā (980–1037), commonly known as Avicenna, was born at Afshaneh, near Bukhara in Persia (present-day Uzbekistan). By the age of 10, he was well versed in the...
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Arrival of Emigrants [i.e. Immigrants], Ellis Island
This film, by Gottfried Wilhelm "Billy" Bitzer of the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, was among the first films of this accomplished cameraman. It is reminiscent of contemporary films of...
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Syr Darya Oblast. Old District of Khodzhend.
This photograph of an abandoned walled structure in the environs of the ancient city of Khodzhent (Khujand, in Tajik) comes from Turkestan Album, one of the richest sources of visual information on...
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Glorifications of the Prophetic Traditions
This manuscript, written by Ibrāhim bin Mustafā in 1744, is a copy of a work in Arabic by the Afghan scholar Al-Baghawi (1043-1122), written sometime between 1116 and 1122 (510-516 A.H.). It is a...
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Chronicle of Foreign Lands
The Zhifang waiji (Chronicle of foreign lands) is a concise geography of the world, the first of its kind written in Chinese. The Italian Jesuit missionary Matteo Ricci produced a map of the world in...
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On Aristotle’s “On the Heavens”
In collaboration with the Chinese scholar Li Zhizao (1565–1630), Portuguese missionary Fu Fanji (Francisco Furtado, 1587–1653) translated two Western works into Chinese. They were Huan you quan (On...
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Colonel John Whitehead Peard: Commonly Known as Garibaldi's Englishman
This original watercolor, signed and dated August 22, 1860, by Thomas Nast (1840-1902), originally was thought to be of Italian patriot Giuseppe Garibaldi, but later was identified as showing Colonel...
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General Map of Estland Province: Showing Postal and Major Roads, Stations and...
This 1820 map of Estland Province is from a larger work, Geographical atlas of the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Poland, and the Grand Duchy of Finland (Geograficheskii atlas Rossiiskoi imperii,...
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Explanation of “The Reward of the Omnipotent”
This volume includes a commentary on Fatḥ al-Qadīr (The reward of the omnipotent) by Muḥammad ibn ‘Abd al-Waḥid ibn al-Humām (circa 1388–1459) and several other works. Ibn al-Humām was a well-known...
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The Gift of the Followers of the Path of Muhammad
Timbuktu, founded around 1100 as a commercial center for trade across the Sahara Desert, was also an important seat of Islamic learning from the 14th century onward. The libraries of Timbuktu contain...
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Timbuctoo the Mysterious
This book is an English translation of Tombouctou la mystérieuse, published in Paris in 1897. The author, Felix Dubois (1862–1945), was a French journalist who in 1895 traveled from Paris to Dakar,...
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Verses by Jami
This calligraphic fragment includes verses composed by the Persian poet Jami (died 1492 [897 AH]), whose full name, Mawlana 'Abd al-Rahman Jami, is noted in the topmost panel. In larger script appears...
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The Authority on Discriminating Scholarly Men
Abd ul-Nabi ibn Saad al-Jazaairi (died circa 1610 AD, 1021 AH) was a Shiite biographer, cleric, and jurist. Hawi al-Aqwal fi maarifat al-rijal (The authority on discriminating scholarly men) is his...
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