The Marking of Poetry: A Rare Vocalization System from an Early Qurʾān Manuscript in Chicago, Paris, and Doha

In 1939, Nabia Abbott published her groundbreaking book on Arabic paleography, The Rise of the North Arabic Script. In its preface, she admits that it was not her intention to produce such an extensive work – at least not at that time – and that her original goal was simply to catalog the Qurʾān manuscripts at the University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute. She explains

State Of The Art In Digital Paleography

Digital paleography is an approach used to assist paleographers in deciding the origin of manuscripts. This is done by recording types of writings present in old manuscripts. It uses digital representation of book hands as a tool to support paleographical analyses by, human experts. There are six types of manuscripts selected which are Arabic, Chinese, Jawi, Indian, Latin and Roman. These types of manuscripts are discussed through their current contribution in the digital paleography field. The main purpose of this paper is to discuss the current work on digital paleography for selected types of manuscripts. Thus, we identified the approaches and methods used to define the types of handwritings in old manuscript

Sicut Euangelia sunt quatuor, distribuerunt continentiam eius in quatuor libros: On the Division of Iberian Qur’ans and Their Translations into Four Parts.

In the prologue to his trilingual Qur’an (Arabic-Castilian-Latin), Juan de Segovia pointed out that among the defects of Robert of Ketton’s Latin translation was the fact that it did not adopt the division of the text into four books that, in his words, the Muslims used in their holy book “in imitation of the Gospels.” Thereafter, despite the weakness of his reasoning, this four-part structure for the Qur’an was widely accepted in European Christian intellectual circles, and it would be reflected in the writings they produced, whether translations or anti- Islamic polemics. That said, this division that we observe in Quranic manuscripts from the Iberian Peninsula, including the complete translation of the Qur’an in the famous T 235 manuscript, derives exclusively from the Islamic tradition and the Quranic sciences. This tradition of dividing the Qur’an into four parts also presents some distinctive features that have not yet been sufficiently explained. The goal of this chapter is to show that this particular way of organizing the Qur’an can be explained by looking at the work of Andalusi scholars such as al-Dānī (fifth/eleventh century), as well as to show how it spread and was faithfully transmitted by the different Islamic communities in Spain, from one generation to the next, up to the end of the seventeenth century.ERC Synergy Grants , The European Qur’an. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion 1150-1850 (EuQu) Cód. según financiadora: 81014

Bongianino, Umberto, The Manuscript Tradition of the Islamic West. Maghribī Round Script and the Andalusī Identity, Edinburgh Studies in Islamic Art, Edinburgh, Edinburgh University Press, 2022, 504 pp.

Review of Monograp

Digital Paleography: Using the Digital Representation of Jawi Manuscripts to Support Paleographic Analysis

Palaeography is the study of ancient handwritten manuscripts to date the age and to localize ancient and medieval scripts. It also deals with analysing the development of the letters shape. Ancient Jawi manuscripts are one of the least studiedarea. Nowadays, over 7789 known Jawi manuscripts are kept in custody of various libraries in Malaysia. Most of these manuscripts were undated with unknown authors and location of origin. Analysing the different types of writing styles and recognizing the manuscript illuminations can discover this important information. In this paper, we discuss the palaeographical analysis from the perspective of computer science and propose a general framework for that. This process involves investigation of Arabic influence on the Jawi manuscript writings, establishing the palaeographical type of the script, and classification of writing styles based on local and global Jawi image features

Digital Paleography: Using the Digital Representation of Jawi Manuscripts to Support Paleographic Analysis

Palaeography is the study of ancient handwritten manuscripts to date the age and to localize ancient and medieval scripts. It also deals with analysing the development of the letters shape. Ancient Jawi manuscripts are one of the least studiedarea. Nowadays, over 7789 known Jawi manuscripts are kept in custody of various libraries in Malaysia. Most of these manuscripts were undated with unknown authors and location of origin. Analysing the different types of writing styles and recognizing the manuscript illuminations can discover this important information. In this paper, we discuss the palaeographical analysis from the perspective of computer science and propose a general framework for that. This process involves investigation of Arabic influence on the Jawi manuscript writings, establishing the palaeographical type of the script, and classification of writing styles based on local and global Jawi image features

Books in Arabic Script

The chapter approaches the book in Arabic script as the indispensable means for the transmission of knowledge across Eurasia and Africa, within cultures and across cultural boundaries, since the seventh century ad. The state of research can be divided into manuscript and print studies, but there is not yet a history of the book in Arabic script that captures its plurilinear development for over fourteen hundred years. The chapter explores the conceptual and practical challenges that impede the integration of the book in Arabic script into book history at large and includes an extensive reference list that reflects its diversity. The final published version was slightly updated, and includes seven illustrations of six Qurans from the holdings of Columbia University Libraries, four manuscripts and two printed versions. Moreover, the illustrations are images of historical artifacts which are in the public domain - despite Wiley's copyright claim