Recently, I discovered, probably later than many others, that the World Digital Library (WDL) is hosting 57 Arabic-script manuscripts, many of whose originals are kept at the Egyptian National Library (EGL). This post is kind of a review of their online presentation.
Continue reading “Arabic manuscripts at World Digital Library: a few notes”A biography of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī
This post presents the biography of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī from Muḥammad Jamīl al-Shaṭṭī’s Mukhtaṣar Ṭabaqāt al-Ḥanābila which was introduced in an earlier post. Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī has received some attention recently for his large-scale book binding project, detailed in Konrad Hirschler’s newest book A Monument to Syrian Medieval Book Culture, which is very good. This post is no book review though. Rather it asks what a biographer some 500 years later deemed important enough to be repeated about Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī.
Continue reading “A biography of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī”Some preliminary thoughts on the question of medieval qāḍī court archives
At the moment, I am enjoying Marina Rustow’s recently published tome The Lost Archive. Traces of a Caliphate in a Cairo Synagogue. The author is speaking to a number of points which interest me, but today I will concentrate on her discussion of Hallaq’s argument about archiving at qāḍīs’ courts.
Continue reading “Some preliminary thoughts on the question of medieval qāḍī court archives”A book list from Damascus
After its main text, Princeton MS Garrett 784Y contains also a book list written by the same scribe who copied the entire manuscript. It contains 114 entries, referring to a rather large private library by the standards of the time. In this post, we will look at it more closely.
Continue reading “A book list from Damascus”Time to talk about book stamps
Instinctively, what comes to mind when you hear the word ‘book stamp’? Is it an Ex Libris with a careful inscription and perhaps an illustration as well? Or is it a functional tool that serves basically the same function as an ownership note? In contrast to those, there is little literature on book stamps, and maybe that is why this post deserves to be written—and published?
Continue reading “Time to talk about book stamps”