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The study of Islamic manuscripts is a dynamic field of research. This section in the
Islamic manuscripts
site gives a follow-up to stories in the news and signalizes new publications and events.
Readers are invited
to offer their notes and remarks (and if possible images as well) for short news flashes.
Announcements of new books and new issues of scholarly journals are equally welcome.
For further information, please
contact the publisher.
June 27, 2008: Conference in Oxford, Wadham College, 14-15 July 2008: The Rise
of the Persian Renaissance.
June 26, 2008: British report on digitized resources in Islamic studies, with special
reference to Islamic manuscripts.
June 24, 2008: New publication on diplomatic documents in the Mamluk era.
June 22, 2008: Islamic manuscripts and books in the Islamic Studies Library, McGill University,
Montreal.
June 12, 2008: New publications on Islamic manuscripts from Tehran.
May 23, 2008: 325th Anniversary of Brill Publishers in Leiden.
May 22, 2008: New publications on Islamic manuscripts from Tehran.
May 13, 2008: New publications on Islamic manuscripts from Tehran.
May 11, 2008: New publication on the dots in Arabic script.
January 24, 2008: Sotheby's Institute of Art offers graduate courses in the
history of art, connoisseurship and the world of art markets.
January 22, 2008: Selected proceedings of Qur'an conference published.
January 17, 2008: Archive of microfilms of ancient Qur'an manuscripts not lost as
previously assumed.
September 18, 2007: The Max Weisweiler Archive in Leiden University Library
described.
September 18, 2007: Exhibition Spice of Life. Raffles and the Malay world.
September 15, 2007: Shahnama Studies I. This well-produced and lavishly illustrated
volume (300 pp.), edited by Charles Melville, and published in 2006 by The Centre of Middle
Eastern and Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge, is the result of the first
Shahnama Workshop held in Pembroke College, Cambridge, in January 2001. Charles
Melville is the co-ordinator of the Shahnama Project which has the ambition to
bring together all miniatures in all manuscripts of Firdawsi’s Shahnama in one
single database. The imposing results so far can be viewed in the new
website
of the Shahnama project .
A paperback copy of the book is available for £ 25 plus postage from the Centre
of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies, University of Cambridge, contact.
September 13, 2007: PhD thesis on Islamic scribal practices and manuscript
manufacture in Central Asia defended in Paris.
September 10, 2007: The Smitskamp/Brill Archives now in Leiden University Library.
January 15, 2007: Courses in calligraphy and marbling:
January 9, 2007: New catalogue:
January 8, 2007: Just published:
January 4, 2007: New publication: The detailed defter of the Liwa`
(district) of Noble Jerusalem. Tapu Defter No. 427 (932 AH/1525-26 - 934 AH/1527-28
Basbakanlik Osmanli Arsivi. A critical and annotative study of the Ottoman text with
Arabic translation [by] Muhammad Adnan al-Bakhit and Noufan Raja al-Sawariyyah.
See for a full review here .
January 3, 2007: In August 2006 a new Malay manuscript was acquired by Leiden University
Library. On 7 December 2006 the Leiden library issued a press release on the acquisition of this new
acquisition. See for images and bibliographical and codicological details of this
manuscript here.
June 30, 2008: Exhibition of Islamic manuscripts in Leipzig, Germany (11 July -
27 September 2008).
'Ein Garten im Ärmel ('A Garden up your sleeve', so called after a metaphor invented
by al-Gahiz) is the title of an exhibition on Islamic book culture which is held in the Library
of the University of Leipzig, Germany (Address: Beethovenstrasse 6, Leipzig), from 11 July
through 27 September 2008. The manuscripts which are exhibited all come from the collections
of Leipzig University Library, which is the proud owner over some 1800 Islamic manuscripts.
The exhibition is part of the project on Islamic manuscripts, financed by the
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft. It embodies the co-operation between Chair of Arabic Studies
and Oriental Philology (Prof. Dr. Verena Klemm [contact]) at the Oriental Institute of Leipzig University and the Director
of the Library of that same University (Prof. Dr. Ulrich Johannes Schneider
[contact]). The results of
this project can be read in the project's
website.
A lavishly illustrated catalogue of the exhibition is published and can be obtained from Leipzig
University Library (further details on price and availability to be obtained during the exhibition
from the Leipzig Library). In the
course of July 2008 the exhibition will be accompanied by a lecture series (details in the Library's
website). See also the exhibition's official
announcement.
This conference is part of a
joint programme between three European universities of Leiden, Cambridge and Oxford on
the history of Persian literature and culture.
The programme was discussed and developed at the inaugural meeting of the European League of
Non-Western Studies (ELNWS), which was established in Leiden in July 2006. The first conference
of this programme 'Traditions in Persian Linguistics and Literature', scheduled for five years
(2007-2011) was successfully organized jointly by the Leiden and Oxford Universities in
Leiden in July 2007.
The main aim of the two day conference is to investigate the phenomenon of the 'sudden'
revival of Persian culture in the 9-10th centuries after a chronological gap of two
centuries. This period in the scholarly literature dedicated to the Iranian studies
is usually called 'two centuries of silence' due to the lack of almost any evidences of
written monuments between the Arab invasion in Sasanian Iran in 7th century A.D. and the
earliest surviving literary examples in the New Persian language of the period of the
Samanid dynasty (819-999) with their capital in Bukhara.
Convenors: Firuza Abdullaeva (University of Oxford) and Asghar Seyed-Gohrab (University of Leiden).
See the full program.
In February 2008, Exeter University Library was awarded GBP 34,900 by the Joint Information
Systems Committee (JISC) of behalf of HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England),
to carry out a survey into User Requirements for Digitised Resources in Islamic Studies.
A team led by Paul Auchterlonie and Ahmed Abu Zayed worked on the project (named DigiIslam)
between March and May, using a mixture of questionnaires, focus groups, telephone
interviews and bibliometric analysis. The resulting report has now been sent to JISC.
JISC will study this report and will pass on any recommendations to HEFCE, who will be
announcing their wider strategy for Islamic Studies in Higher Education later this summer.
See the full text of the JISC report.
It is a substantial document, but the Executive Summary and Recommendations can be found on
pages 5-11.
For details of all the other reports which have been commissioned by HEFCE since June
2007, when Islamic Studies was designated a Strategic Subject by the UK Government, go to
the HEFCE website (subsection
Islamic Studies).
Communication by Paul Auchterlonie, Librarian for Middle East Studies, University of Exeter,
Old Library, Prince of Wales Rd., Exeter EX4 4SB, U.K.
Frédéric Bauden (University of Liège, Belgium) has just published his
article 'Les relations diplomatiques entre les sultans mamlouks circassiens et les autres
pouvoirs du Dar al-islam. L'apport du ms. ar. 4440 (BNF, Paris)', in Annales islamiques
41 (2007), pp. 3-29. See the article.
Mark Abley has just written an interesting article, 'Understanding Islam', in McGill News,
Spring/Summer 2008, pp. 23-27, on Islamic books and manuscripts in Montreal, with interviews with
Robert Wisnovsky, F. Jamil Rageb, Khalid Mustafa Medani and Adam Gacek.
See the article.
We have just received from The Research Centre for the Written Heritage (Miras Maktoob),
address: No. 1304, 2nd Floor, Farvardin Building, Between Daneshgah and Abureyhan St., Enqelab Ave.
Tehran, I.R. Iran 1315693519 (P.O Box 13185-519) Nos. 10-11 of its Monthly Journal
of Textual Criticism, Codicology and Iranology Heritage Report (Gozaresh-e Miras) of July-August 2007.
See the table of contents.
We have also just received from the same Institution a copy of its Quarterly Journal of
Book Review, Bibliography and Text Information, Mirror of Heritage
(Ayene-ye Miras), New Series, vol. 5, issue 4 (= No. 39) of Winter 2007
(ISSN 1561-9400).
See the table of contents.
At the celebration of the 325th anniversary of Brill's, the well-known publishing house
in Leiden, a history of the firm, from the early beginnings in 1683 till the present day,
has just been published: Sytze van der Veen (met bijdragen van Paul Dijstelberge, Mirte D.
Groskamp & Kasper van Ommen), Brill. 325 jaar uitgeven voor de wetenschap. Leiden/Boston 2008,
180 pp. See the cover and title-page.
The text of the book is in Dutch, but since it is profusely illustrated this should not pose a
problem for the interested reader. Brill's has been known, and is still well-known,
for its prestigious publications in the field of Oriental studies. See the publisher's own jubilee
website.
We have just received from The Research Centre for the Written Heritage (Miras Maktoob),
address: No. 1304, 2nd Floor, Farvardin Building, Between Daneshgah and Abureyhan St., Enqelab Ave.
Tehran, I.R. Iran 1315693519 (P.O Box 13185-519) No. 12 of its Monthly Journal
of Textual Criticism, Codicology and Iranology Heritage Report (Gozaresh-e Miras) of September 2007.
See the table of contents.
We have also just received from the same Institution a copy of its Quarterly Journal of
Book Review, Bibliography and Text Information, Mirror of Heritage
(Ayene-ye Miras), New Series, vol. 5, issue 3 (= No. 38) of Autumn 2007
(ISSN 1561-9400).
See the table of contents.
We have just received from The Research Centre for the Written Heritage (Miras Maktoob),
address: No. 1304, 2nd Floor, Farvardin Building, Between Daneshgah and Abureyhan St., Enqelab Ave.
Tehran, I.R. Iran 1315693519 (P.O Box 13185-519) Nos 8-9 of its Monthly Journal
of Textual Criticism, Codicology and Iranology Heritage Report (Gozaresh-e Miras) of May-June 2007.
See the table of contents.
We have also just received from the same Institution a copy of its Quarterly Journal of
Book Review, Bibliography and Text Information, Mirror of Heritage
(Ayene-ye Miras), New Series, vol. 5, issue 1, 2 (= Nos. 36-37) of Spring, Summer 2007
(ISSN 1561-9400).
See the table of contents.
Prof. Andreas Kaplony (University of Zürich, Switzerland) has just published
an enlightening article on the writing of dots in Arabic script based on research on
a corpus of texts from the first and second centuries of the Islamic era:
Andreas Kaplony, 'What Are Those Few Dots For? Thoughts on the
Orthography of the Qurra Papyri (709-710), the Khurasan Parchments (755-777) and the
Inscription of the Jerusalem Dome of the Rock (692)', in: Arabica 55 (2008), pp.
91-112. Read this article: (pdf).
Contact the publisher, Brill's in Leiden,
about this journal.
Sotheby's Institute (London, New York, Singapore) has just published its
program for 2008-2009.
Among the wide range of courses offered by Sotheby's Institute (see the Institute's
site) there are unfortunately no
specific courses for Islamic art, but the courses on the international art trade
may be interesting for all those interested in developing a career in the field of Islamic art.
Oxford University Press, in association with the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London,
on 18 February 2008 publishes the selected proceedings of the conference "Word of God, Art of Man.
The Qur'an and its Creative Expressions". The volume is edited by Fahmida Suleman. The
conference was held in London, 18-21 October 2003. See the announcement of the publisher
(pdf).
See the original programme of the conference of 2003
(pdf).
What had been known for several years among specialists has now seeped out into the international press:
The microfilms of ancient Qur'an manuscripts which were collected by pre-war German scholars with
the purpose to prepare a critical edition of the Qur'an were not lost in the war,
contrary to what always had been thought. The international press has taken up the issue
with strong conspirational overtones.
- Read the article "Indiana Jones meets the
Da Vinci Code" by Spengler in Asia Times online of January 15, 2008
(pdf).
- Read the article "The Lost Archive" by
Andrew Higgins in the Wall Street Journal of January 12, 2008 (on-line version) or January 17, 2008
(paper version): press cutting
(pdf) or text
taken from the website
(pdf)
of the Wall Street Journal.
- In the course of July 2007 Ms. Beate Wiesmüller saw her catalogue of the Max Weisweiler
Archive being published as volume 37 in Codices Manuscripti, a series of manuscripts
catalogues published on behalf of Leiden University Library: Das Max Weisweiler Archiv
der Universitätsbibliothek Leiden. Leiden 2007, text entirely in German, illustrated,
153 pp. (ISSN 0169-8672 volume 37). Price: € 15.
- Leiden University Library had in 1989 purchased the scholarly notes of the German
Orientalist Max Weisweiler (1902-1968). These notes, which are basically the
contents of Weisweiler’s desk in his private study, had been kept for many years
by his widow. Only when she died, Weisweiler’s private library and study notes
came up for sale and were purchased by Brill’s antiquarian bookshop in Leiden.
The scholarly notes were eventually acquired by the Leiden Library, where they
were registered as Or. 22.307. The greater part of the archive reflects Weisweiler’s
interest in Islamic bindings. A large collection of rubbings from bindings in Germany,
Holland and Turkey is part of the archive.
- The author of the catalogue, Ms. Beate Wiesmüller, is young a German islamologist,
who is presently attached to the University of Leipzig where she works on catalogues
of Arabic manuscripts in collections in Germany.
- Source: Extracted from Nieuwsbrief Universiteit Leiden, dated 18 September 2007,
with additional information from the book itself.
Picton Reading Room, Central Library, Liverpool, 9 August - 28 October 2007
Extract from the introductory leaflet by Annabel Teh Gallop:
Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles (1781-1826) is best known today as the founder of
Singapore, but he was in fact a passionate scholar of all aspects of the Malay world
during nearly twenty years in Southeast Asia in the service of the British East India
Company. Raffles was first posted to Penang and Melaka, and later served as governor
of Java (1811-1816) and of Bengkulu in Sumatra (1818-1824). His monumental work The
History of Java, published in 1817, made his name and earned him a knighthood.
But at the heart of his scholarly legacy is a tragic black hole.
Read more
September 16, 2007: Just appeared:
Constant Hamès (ed), Coran et talismans. Textes et pratiques magiques en
milieu musulman. Paris 2007. 416 pp.,
illustrated. (Éditions Karthala).
Price € 29. ISBN 978-284586-873-1.
This collective work is the result of research undertaken between 2000 and 2003 in
the French National Centre for Scholarly Research in Paris (CNRS) under the
title ’Magic and islamic writing in the African and European Worlds’
(Magie et écriture islamique dans les mondes africain et européen).
Textual magic in Islam has had few students. Edmond Doutté’s Magie et
religion dans l’Afrique du Nord dates from as early as 1908. Tawfic Fahd’s
ground breaking thesis, La divination arabe, dates from 1965. A recent collective
work was edited by Emilie Savage-Smith (Magic and divination in early Islam, Aldershot
2004). So the present work is a welcome addition to the field.
The authors concentrate on contemporary magical practice of classical Islamic
texts, from the Qur’an itself till al-Buni. And within that field they have
focussed on the use of Arabic writing in magical practice, be it on paper, textile
or metal. They combine an anthropological and islamological approach, and refer to
practices in Tunisia, Yemen, Mauritania, Senegal, Mali, the Comores, Madagascar and
France. One of the major works used is al-Buni’s Shams al-Ma`arif.
The editor of the present volume has a longstanding familiarity with the subject
as is clear from his thesis L’art talismanique dans l’islam d’Afrique
occidentale (‘Talismanic art in the Islam of West Africa’), which he
defended in 1997.
See for the full table of contents of the volume here.
See for the full table of contents of the volume
here.
On Thursday 13 September 2007 Ms. Marie Efthymiou defended her thesis entitled
Transmission manuscrite du Coran. Pratiques scribales et techniques de fabrication
du livre manuscript en Asie centrale (`The written transmission of the Qur'an. The
history of scribal practices and manuscript production in Central Asia’, 313 pp,
illustrated). Supervisor of the thesis was Professor François Déroche of the
École Pratiques des Hautes Études, Sorbonne, Paris. Ms. Efthymiou passed
her examination with honours. The thesis, which was written in French, will hopefully
be published at some stage in the not too far future.
This is probably the first time that a PhD thesis has been written which exclusively
focusses on the codicology of an Islamic area. The author has used the Qur’anic
manuscripts from Central Asia as a representative group which seems large enough to
draw conclusions from about many aspects Islamic book making in Central Asia.
In her abstract (pp. vi-vii) the author describes her work as follows:
`This study includes the techniques of the book making and written transmission in
Central Asia from the 16th to the 19th century. It identifies a lot of local
specificities on paper making, page setting, calligraphy, book bindings, patterns and
colours of illumination, and describes foreign influences, such as Persian, Indian,
and lately Russian. The Indian influence is particularly strong in the Bukhara
school. By analyzing the craftsman's role and the place of the manuscripts in society,
the book clarifies a part of the culture and the social past of the Central Asian
societies. The 17th century is a turning point. The manuscript becomes easier
to afford and is spread on a wider scale. The Soviet period has turned this tradition
to its end, and this study restores it. The marginal notes guiding the recitation of
the Qur’an are unique. A madhhab seems to appear, because a real intellectual
effervescence is observable in the last two centuries. Its consequences are important
as well in the education as in devotion practices.’
An important source for the history of the Oriental booktrade in The Netherlands
has now been incorporated in the Library of Leiden University. In the course of
the summer of 2007 Mr. Rijk Smitskamp, founder and owner of the Leiden-based antiquarian
bookshop ‘Smitskamp Oriental Antiquarium’ (formerly Brill’s antiquarian bookshop)
donated his archives to Leiden University Library. The archive consists of ...
Read full text here.
The Turkish artist Dr. Mehmet Refii Kileci in
Rotterdam, The Netherlands, starts from 2 February 2007 onwards his course
in marbling (level 1). From 20 January 2007 onwards he starts his courses in marbling
(level 2), and calligraphy. Place: Rumi Kunst Instituut, Piekstraat 23 f,
3071 EL Rotterdam, tel: 020 471 0026.
Catalogue of manuscripts in al-Khalidiyya Library, Jerusalem. Prepared by Nazmi Al-Ju`beh.
Edited by Khader Salameh. (With a preface by Sheikh Ahmad Zaki Yamani, and an introduction
on the history of the Khalidiyya Library by Walid al-Khalidi). Al-Furqan
Islamic Heritage Foundation. London 2006/1427.
Available from the publisher: Al-Furqan Foundation, Eagle House, High Street, Wimbledon,
LONDON SW19 5EF, U.K.
A thematically arranged catalogue in Arabic describing 1985 manuscript volumes, with
indexes for book titles and authors’ names.
M.H. Custers, Al-Ibadiyya. A bibliography. Maastricht 2006. 3 vols. Vol. 1. Ibadi`s of the
Mashriq, 432 pp.; vol. 2. Ibadi`s of the Maghrib
(incl. Egypt), 371 pp.; vol. 3. Secondary literature, 348 pp.
Recently published by the same author: Ibadi publishing activities in the East and in the West,
c. 1880-1960s. An attempt to an inventory, with references to related recent publications.
Maastricht 2006, 114 pp.
These works are privately published by the author and can be ordered directly from him: Mr. Martin
H. Custers, Emilionlaan 3, NL-6213 GL MAASTRICHT, The Netherlands.
Mail for further information.
