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Tuluniana 1: Animals

Muḥammad Ibn Ṭūlūn (d. 1546), one of the protagonists of this blog, was quite a prolific writer, according to the work list he provided himself in his autobiography al-Fulk al-mashḥūn fī aḥwāl Muḥammad Ibn Ṭūlūn. Judging by the given titles, his complete oeuvre encompasses well above 700 works. Many of those remain only in manuscript–or are regarded as lost. Continue reading “Tuluniana 1: Animals”

Digital possibilities for Research on Arabic Literature

The word ‘digital humanities’ is ringing in all our ears these days. And indeed, this umbrella term encompasses a number of original – and sometimes breathtaking – approaches to old corpora. Yet, reality often enough stays far behind expectations, and the Arabic language and script, in particular, cause obstacles for applications in our field. Continue reading “Digital possibilities for Research on Arabic Literature”

Documentary evidence – evidence on documents?

One of the still oft-repeated truisms about Muslim societies before the Ottoman / Early Modern period is that they left no archives of documents behind, precisely because status was negotiated in ways different from, and more informal than, those in contemporaneous Europe. Konrad Hirschler’s discoveries of reused documents in codices are only one example. Continue reading “Documentary evidence – evidence on documents?”