Old manuscripts are a part of the richest cultural heritage and legacy of civilizations. Repetitive manual manipulation of fragile documents should be avoided as it could destroy them. Digitalization, therefore, is a convenient solution for the preservation of these manuscripts. Many digitization projects, which treat Latin scripts, have been developed such as manuscripts d'Oc and d'Oïl in the Vatican Library (IRHT 2011), Better Access to Manuscripts and Browsing of Images (Calabretto et al. 1999), etc. The conception of recognition systems for degraded handwritten Arabic document images knows today a great expansion and appears as a necessity in order to exploit the wealth of information contained in ancient manuscripts