The mediaeval Arabic manuscripts are not only
valuable artifacts but they also represent one of the major
sources of scholar information in the field of Oriental Studies.
This paper discusses the methods of Arabic Manuscripts
Digitization. Over the last fifteen years a lot of Arabic
manuscript digitization projects have been carried out.
Digital collections of the manuscripts based on Arabic script
are represented in the collections of libraries worldwide,
including on-line databases. Nevertheless, these collections
are restricted by their functionality: technology of metadata
integration relies on the human made characteristics. While a
possibility of automatic metadata introduction would
facilitate the task of manuscript processing, at the same time
it allows automatic quantitative and quality analysis of the
manuscripts. This paper analyses different methods for
classifying and retrieving historical Arabic handwritten
documents and suggests the most efficient methods of their
digitization.