Manar al-Athar Project

The Manar al-Athar website (www.manar-al-athar.ox.ac.uk) aims to provide open access, searchable images, freely-downloadable for teaching, research, and publication. These high resolution images of archaeological sites, with buildings and art, cover Syro-Palestine/the Levant, Egypt, and Arabia. The chronological range is from Alexander the Great (i.e., from about 300 BC) through the Islamic period.

Thanks to grant funding and philanthropic support, it is possible for images to be freely available for academic and educational publication simply by acknowledging the source. It is the first website of its kind providing such material labelled jointly in both Arabic and English to facilitate its use for both teaching and research in the Arab world, where most of the monuments are located. Connected to this, we will be publishing related material, both online and on paper, in English and Arabic.

Manar al-Athar is Arabic for "Guide to Archaeology" and has been chosen because Manara, in Egypt, refers to both the Lighthouse of Alexandria (the Pharos) and to minarets. This conveys the transition, and often continuity, covered by the chronological range of the material.

Thank you to donors for their support - gifts of any size make an impact, helping us to achieve our aims, and benefit the many hundreds of thousands of people around the world who benefit from the website.