They are falcon hunters, but their prey is to be found not in the desert sands but hidden in the dusty shelves of public libraries and private collections around the world. For two French researchers, the object of the hunt is the rarest of all written works on falconry, a 13th-century treatise in medieval Arabic that would be the oldest such document in the world. Patrick Pallait and Catherine Tsagarakis work for the Middle East Falconry Archive, a research project sponsored by Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed, the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, with aim of creating a digital and physical library of Arabic-script texts on falconry.

Read More: Abu Dhabi Research Tries to Find Ancient Arabic Manuscripts on the Art of Falconry