Islamic Manuscripts in the National Archives of the Philippines

Abstract

Despite being one of the most important collections of Philippine documents in jāwī script, the National Archives of the Philippines have been seldom employed by researchers. César Adib Majul even confessed to the puzzling condition of the original archive in the preparation of his landmark Muslims in the Philippines. Nevertheless, he was the first to unearth its treasures. After several years of extensive work, we have developed a picture of its contents and values. In this paper, we will present an introduction to the nature of Philippine Islamic manuscripts by describing the contents, scope and language of the jāwī documents preserved at the National Archives of the Philippines.