INSPIRE - INtegrated Study of Pigments, Inks, Paper & Resilience in Early Qur’anic Manuscripts and Islamic Artefacts

The INSPIRE project aims to advance heritage preservation and long-term accessibility by developing and integrating innovative materials-science workflows and AI-enabled documentation architectures across Islamic manuscripts and broader museum collections. It covers: (i) Building and operationalizing, an AI-curated platform that consolidates collection data (images, analytical datasets, recipes, and metadata) and enables automated organization, semantic linking, and condition/risk scoring to support conservation decision-making including the screening of many different recipes with function of time and space; (ii) Strengthening evidence-based conservation through non-destructive and minimally invasive characterization of inks, pigments, binders, and supports, linking material signatures to provenance, manufacture, and condition trends across institutions; (iii) Understanding and mitigating deterioration by replicating historical recipes, performing controlled artificial ageing (light, humidity, temperature, pollutants), mapping chemical and mechanical degradation pathways, and validating stabilization and preventive conservation strategies. Importantly, INSPIRE extends beyond manuscripts through its collaboration with Qatar Museums, applying the same integrated approach to relevant heritage artefacts (e.g., metal, wood, painted, dyed, or pigmented objects and mixed-material items) where these artefacts also face degradation risks. Overall, INSPIRE bridges laboratory innovations and real-world conservation practice by validating methods directly with partner collections (QNL and Qatar Museums), translating outcomes into deployable protocols and guidelines, and delivering scalable digital infrastructure that turns dispersed heritage data into actionable conservation intelligence.

Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU)