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

Modern palimpsests. The case of the counterfeit Kufic fragments

The article discusses a case of fake "Kufi" fragments offered on sale on the Ebay platform, where Arabic passages were written on top of erased Ethiopic texts

Clair-obscure in Copenhagen

Review of I. Perho, Catalogue of Persian manuscripts. Codices Persici Arthur Christenseniani, Codices Simonseniani Persici, Codices Persici Additamenta, I–II, Catalogue of Oriental Manuscripts, Xylographs, etc., in Danish Collections (COMDC), 8/1–2 (Copenhagen: the Royal Library and NIAS Press, 2014

The Philologist's Stone. The Continuing Search for the Stemma

Thinking of the stemma one should try to avoid thinking of a tree and its branches. The few disparate textual witnesses that we do have are often nothing more than a small pile of twigs and branches, of which we will probably never know where in the tree(s) of transmission they had their place. Lachmann’s method, the stemmatological approach in textual criticism is the other extreme, as it promises its adepts a beautiful tree, even if many of the branches remain invisible forever

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xv, 421 p.; 27 cm