Diary : manuscript, 1666-1679, 1723, and 1726

Diary concerning chiefly religious matters, mostly Puritanical confessions of Tompson's piety not living up to the expectation of the Lord. There is also mention of the many afflictions God is "pleased" to bestow upon Tompson's wife.

Sharḥ abyāt al-Muṭawwal : manuscript, 1703

Written in one column, 19 lines per page, in black and red.

Risale-yi hüsn-i hat : manuscript, 1603 or 4

Written in one column, 9 lines per page, in black and red. First ten leaves framed within one golden line (ff. 1r-10v).

The Lawes and Orders of Harvard Colledge, 1655

Handwritten copy of the College laws used by Harvard presidents Charles Chauncy and Leonard Hoar, in a modern hardcover binding. The last six pages of the volume contain additional entries through 1672, some in the hand of President Chauncy. One entry details the 1666 expulsion of Harvard students Mason, Hubbard, and Wintrop for the hanging of "Goodma Sells doge upon the signe post."

Student notebook of Samuel Dunbar, 1721-1722

This leather-bound volume contains substantial transcriptions copied by Samuel Dunbar from textbooks while he was a student at Harvard in 1721 and 1722. There is a general index to texts at the end of the volume. Dunbar's notebook provides a window into the state of higher education in the eighteenth century and offers a firsthand account of academic life at Harvard College. Notably, he often indicated the number of days spent copying texts into his book.

Questiones propositae pro modulo discutiendae Comitiis publicis Harvardini Collegii quod est divin. provid. Cantabrigiae Nov-Anglorum a Laureae Magistralis candidatis, 1660-1753

The bound volume holds handwritten transcriptions of selected Harvard Commencement Quaestiones copied by Isaac Mansfield (Harvard AB 1742). The manuscript volume includes from the 1708 Quaestiones onward, the notation "N.B." next to questions performed by the candidate during the Commencement exercises; the original printed Quaestiones sheets do not note this information. The volume includes Quaestiones transcriptions for which no original broadsides are known to still exists.

Theses, in Comitiis publicis Harvardini Collegii quod est Cantabrigiae Nov-Anglorum, defensae & pro viribus propugnatae a Juvenibus in Artibus initiatis, [1660-1753]

The bound volume holds handwritten transcriptions of selected Harvard Commencement Theses copied by Isaac Mansfield (Harvard AB 1742). The manuscript volume holds only the Theses chosen for public disputation. The volume includes Theses transcriptions for which no original broadsides are known to still exists.

Sermons on fast days : manuscript, 1678-1684

Autograph manuscript sermons in the hand of William Adams, including table of contents. Three other pieces are by later hands: two (both 1695) by Samuel Danforth, and the last (undated) possibly by Eliphalet Adams, son of William Adams.

Letter from William Winthrop to William Bentley, 1801 January 14

Two leaves with a two-page handwritten letter from William Winthrop to Bentley discussing biographical questions about Harvard alumni Joseph Browne (AB 1666), James Bayley (AB 1669), and Joseph Gerrish (AB 1700).

Mathematical notebook, and commonplace book, circa 1689-1769

Manuscript notebook, possibly kept by Harvard students, containing 17th century English transcriptions of arithmetic and geometry texts, one of which is dated 1689-1690; 18th century transcriptions from John Ward’s “The Young Mathematician’s Guide”; and notes on physics lectures delivered by John Winthrop, the Hollis Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy at Harvard from 1738 to 1779. The notebook also contains 18th century reading notes on Henry VIII, Tudor succession, and English history from Daniel Neal’s “The History of the Puritans” and David Hume’s “History of England,” and notes on Ancient history, taken mainly from Charles Rollin’s “The Ancient History of the Egyptians, Carthaginians, Assyrians, Babylonians, Medes and Persians, Macedonians and Grecians.” Additionally included are an excerpt from Plutarch’s “Lives” and transcriptions of three articles from “The Gentleman’s Magazine, and Historical Chronicle,” published in 1769: “A Critique on the Works of Ovid”; a book review of “A New Voyage to the West-Indies”; and “Genuine Anecdotes of Celebrated Writers, &.” The flyleaf contains the inscription “Semper boni aliquid operis facito ut diabolus te semper inveniat occupatum,” a variation on a quote of Saint Jerome that translates approximately as “Always good to do some work so that the devil may always find you occupied.” In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Harvard College undergraduates often copied academic texts and lecture notes into personal notebooks in place of printed textbooks. Winthrop used Ward’s textbook in his class, while the books of Hume, Neal, and Rollin were used in history courses taught at Harvard in the 18th century.

Carte des trois Arabies: tirée en partie de l'Arabe de Nubie, en partie de diuers autres autheurs

par le S. N. Sanson d'Abbeville Geographe ordinaire du Roy ; J. Somer sculp.

El-cildü's-sânī min Şerhi'l-Mesnevî / lil-Şem'î : manuscript, 1616

A Turkish commentary on "Mas̲navī maʻnavī" of Jalāladdīn Rūmī commissioned by Sultan Murad III (982-1003 AH /1574-95 AD).

Khulāṣah-ʼi aḥvāl-i Bānū Bagum mukhāṭab ba-Mumtāz Maḥall : manuscript, undated

Biography of Banū Begam, surnamed Mumtāz Maḥall, and known as Tāj Bībī, wife of Shāh Jahān, and of the buildings connected with her name.

Ḥāshiyah-ʼi Nawwāb-i marḥūm-i maghfūr Khalīfah Sulṭān bar Maʻālim al-uṣūl : manuscript

1853 or 4.

Thabat al-Shaykh Muḥammad al-Bābilī : manuscript, undated

Written in one column, 49 lines per pages, in black.