‮نصوصٌ جديدة في صناعة الحبر والمداد‬‎

‮المستخلص‬‎ ‮تعرض هذه المقالة لنصوص تُنشر لأول مرة عن صناعة الأحبار وطريقة تركيبها باستخدام المواد الأساسية المختلفة، إضافة لبعض الوصفات المتصلة بالكتابة على المخطوط ومحو الكتابة، مما ورد في مخطوطة كتاب «التذكرة» لقطب الدين النهروالي (ت ‭٩٩٠‬هـ/ ‭١٥٨٢‬م)، وهي نماذج جيدة تُضاف إلى ما وصلنا من تركيبات الحبر وصناعته. وتهدف هذه المقالة إلى إطلاع الباحثين على الوصفات التي أوردها النهروالي، والتعريف بها وبمضمونها ومدى أصالتها وقيمتها، ومحاولة الكشف عن مصدره الذي أخذ عنه، أم أنها من مجرباته الشخصية ومما تعاطى عمله بمعرفته الذاتية؟‬‎

Saleroom Fiction versus Provenance

This article examines a group of twelve fragments in different languages and different scripts previously held in the Schøyen collection in London and Oslo. After they first emerged on the market in 1993, these fragments received colourful hypothetical and/or fictional pseudo-provenances. However, a consideration of the material logic of these parchment fragments (including folding lines and sewing holes) as well as an examination of the Arabic marginal manuscript notes they carry allows us to re-establish their historical trajectory from the seventh/thirteenth century onwards. At this point, they became part of Muslim Damascene manuscript culture and were reused as wrappers for small booklets in the scholarly field of ḥadīth. In the late ninth/fifteenth century, these booklets were subjected to a massive binding project and the fragments went into new large volumes. This article thus suggests approaches to use provenance research in order to re-historicize decontextualized fragments in modern collections.

What’s in a Seal?

It was only during the Ottoman period, beginning in 1517, that seals gained popularity in the Arab world as a means to document people’s interactions with books. Some seals came alone while others accompanied handwritten notes. Some spelled out their purpose clearly through formulations such as “min kutub”, “hāḏā mā waqafa” or the like; others contained only pious formulae and a name. But even the latter are generally assumed to denote ownership or endowment. In this article, I present the example of a seal that belonged to a judge in early Ottoman Egypt. I will argue that the seal did not denote ownership of the books on which it is found, and I will attempt to show that it was used by its owner in the process of an inventory of Cairo’s endowed libraries. I will also discuss what this insight could mean for interpreting the history of books and collections through seals.

Place Names in Colophons and Notes of Yemeni Manuscripts

This article points to some geographical and historical conditions of scholarship and manuscript culture in Zaydi Yemen. The place of copying is only sporadically given in the colophons of Arabic manuscripts. This is confirmed by a systematic investigation into the catalogues of the Berlin collection presented here. In particular, this article discusses the presence of place names in the colophons and notes of Yemeni manuscripts, based on an examination of 750 volumes held in the Österreichische Nationalbibliothek in Vienna, the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich, and the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin. It reveals that manuscripts from the Zaydi tradition were copied in numerous locations, but also shows the relevance of other places with respect to the transmission of knowledge. The wide range of fifty villages and smaller towns that appear in the colophons is significant for Yemen and can be explained by the long tradition of Zaydi scholars settling in the tribal territory in villages (qarya) or settlements called hijra (pl. hijar). The result remains surprising in so far as older catalogues of Yemeni manuscripts seem to be erratic and inconsistent in providing information on places of copying.

Paths of Prayers in Ottoman North Africa

This article discusses The Met’s unpublished Dalāʾil al-khayrāt—2017.301—(MS New York, TMMA 2017.301), together with a group of comparable manuscripts. The earliest known dated manuscript within the corpus, it introduces several iconographic elements that are new to the Dalāʾil, and which compare with the traditions developing in the Mashriq and the Ottoman world in particular. The article discusses Dalāʾil production in seventeenth-century North Africa and its development in the Ottoman provinces, Tunisia, and/or Algeria. The manuscripts illustrate how an Ottoman visual apparatus—among which the theme of the holy sanctuaries at Mecca and Medina, appearing for the first time in MS New York, TMMA 2017.301—is established for Muhammadan devotion in Maghribī Dalāʾils. The manuscripts belong to the broader historic, social, and artistic contexts of Ottoman North Africa. Our analysis captures the complex dynamics of Ottomanization of the North African provinces of the Ottoman Empire, remaining strongly rooted in their local traditions, while engaging with Ottoman visual idioms.

The Birth of a Successful Prayer Book

The vast project to reconstruct a history and geography of the spread of the Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt necessarily involves looking into the beginnings of the prayerbook’s manuscript transmission. Composed in Morocco before 869/1465, the prayerbook was already known in the Eastern Maghreb from the mid-11th/17th century. It then reached Turkey and the rest of the Mashriq. After that it found its way to Central, South and Southeast Asia. Returning to the core of the book’s diffusion, this article questions the existence of an autograph copy of Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt. How was the manuscript tradition of one of the most copied religious books in pre-modern times established? This article also poses essential questions about the work of the actors (copyists, illuminators) responsible for the diffusion of the book in its early days.

The Regional Recitations of al-Jazūlī’s Dalāʾil al-Ḫayrāt as Reflected in Its Manuscript Tradition

Muḥammad al-Jazūlī’s Dalāʾil al-Ḫayrāt is one of the most popular and widespread Islamic prayer books in the Sunni Islamic world; consequently, most library collections around the world have many copies of this manuscript. Despite its prolific written form, it is its recitation that should probably be considered the most prominent expression of the text. This paper undertakes a careful analysis of the vocalization and orthoepic signs added to three vocalized copies of 18th-century Dalāʾil al-Ḫayrāt manuscripts from Mali, the Maghreb, and Turkey. It reveals that they each have distinct recitation styles with their own phonological and morphological features, distinct from the rules applied in Classical Arabic prose text. Moreover, it is shown that these recitation styles clearly draw upon the rules of local Quranic reading traditions, while not entirely assimilating to them, thus giving a distinct local orthoepic flavour to the manner in which this text was recited.

Illustrated and Illuminated Manuscripts of the Dalāʾil al-khayrāt from Southeast Asia

Illustrated and illuminated manuscripts of the Dalāʾil al-khayrāt from Southeast Asia are an invaluable resource for our understanding of the painting tradition of this region. The many copies now kept in various institutions attest to its popularity, while the lavish treatment often given to manuscripts indicates the high regard local communities had for this text. The types of images featured are similar to those from other parts of the Islamic world, yet these images, as well as the decorative illumination, also reflect local artistic styles. This paper examines a selection of Southeast Asian manuscripts of the Dalāʾil al-khayrāt dating from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, situating them both within the broader context of manuscript production and usage, and the pietistic landscape of the region.