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Agnes Smith Lewis and Margaret Dunlop Gibson were twin sisters born in 1843. Between them they knew more than a dozen languages. Agnes's discovery of the Syriac Sinaiticus, on one of her many journeys to Sinai, was the most important manuscript find since that of the Codex Sinaiticus in 1859 and they made a significant contribution to Syriac and Arabic studies in their cataloguing of the Arabic and Syriac manuscripts at Saint Catherine's Monastery. They travelled much in Europe and in the Middle East until the start of the First World War and they collected about 1700 manuscript fragments, now known as the Lewis-Gibson collection. Margaret died in 1920 and Agnes in 1926.

The Gibb Memorial Trust was established in 1902 in the memory of Elias John Wilkinson Gibb a Turkish scholar. His mother, Jane Gibb established the Trust and she was one of the original trustees alongside Edward G. Browne, Guy Le Strange, Henry F. Amedroz, Alexander G. Ellis, Reynold A. Nicholson, and E. Denison Ross. Subsequent trustees included Mrs. Ida W. E. Ogilvy Gregory, E. J. W. Gibb's widow, and scholars such as Charles A. Storey, Hamilton A. R. Gibb, Reuben Levy, Arthur J. Arberry, Alfred F. L. Beeston and Harold W. Bailey. The current trustees can be found on the Trust's website . During the time of these papers the administration was undertaken by the Cambridge solicitor W.L. Raynes, and his son, E.G. Raynes.

The Trust's purpose was the publication of editions and translations of Arabic, Persian and Turkish texts. They comprised of a First Series published 1905-16, with a delayed volume of the Series not appearing until 1928, forming nos. 1-25 (in fact, several of these were multi-volume works); and a New Series, beginning in 1921, nos. 1 to 29 (again, some of these were multi-volume works). The Trust still continues to publish some volumes and reprint some of the original publications.