Overview

For centuries, scribes and users have left notes in the margins of manuscripts, paraphrasing, explaining, criticising, and supplementing the main text. This volume sheds light on such scribal practices in Arabic manuscripts, investigating diverse techniques and approaches across the vast geographical and temporal range of the Arabic manuscript age. What similarities and differences can we observe regarding place, time, and subject? And what can we learn from these annotations in the margins or between the lines? This volume is the first to focus specifically on the rich tradition of marginal commentaries in Arabic manuscripts and seeks to establish the study of commentary and glossing practices as an important source for the history of Arabic literature, Islamic intellectual history, and comparative manuscript studies. Contributors are Berat Açıl, Philip Bockholt, Stefanie Brinkmann, Nadja Danilenko, Verena Klemm, Boris Liebrenz, Nadine Löhr, Darya Ogorodnikova, Deborah Schlein and Florian Sobieroj.

Full Product Details

Author:   Stefanie Brinkmann
Publisher:   Brill
Imprint:   Brill
Volume:   1
Dimensions:   Width: 15.50cm , Height: 2.70cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   0.922kg
ISBN:  

9789004720688

ISBN 10:   9004720685
Pages:   432
Publication Date:   13 November 2025
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
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Table of Contents

Foreword Preface List of Figures and Tables Notes on Contributors Introduction: Mapping the Field  Stefanie Brinkmann Part 1: Methodological Approaches and Issues of Classification 1 Putting Margins in Context: Some Practical Considerations  Boris Liebrenz 2 Filling in the Blanks: Annotating Soninke Ajami Manuscripts  Darya Ogorodnikova 3 At the High End of Learning: Note-Taking and Commentary Practices of a Nineteenth-Century Ismaili Scholar in India  Verena Klemm Part 2: Sciences 4 Annotation Systems and Symbols in Arabic Manuscripts on Astral Sciences  Nadine Löhr 5 Citations in the Margins: a Reader’s Education in South Asian Ṭibb  Deborah Schlein Part 3: History and Geography 6 No Comment: Marginalia in Geographic Literature from the Tenth Century Onwards  Nadja Danilenko 7 Partisan Readers: Fighting over the Interpretation of History in the Margins of MS BnF, Arabe 1825  Boris Liebrenz 8 Footnotes in Premodern Times? On the Phenomenon of Minhiyyāt in Persian Texts  Philip Bockholt Part 4: Religion 9 Cārullāh Efendī (d. 1151/1738) on Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240): Correcting Misconception via Manuscript Notes  Berat Açıl 10 The Unique Copy of Ibn Khafīf’s Collection of Transmitted Prayers   Codicology, Marginalia, Paratexts, and Transmitters’ Strategies  Florian Sobieroj 11 Struggling with the Margin – Studying Marginal Commentaries in a Hadith Collection: Al-Baghawī’s Maṣābīḥ al-sunna  Stefanie Brinkmann Conclusion: Common Traits and Differences  Stefanie Brinkmann Index

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Author Information

Stefanie Brinkmann, Ph.D., is research fellow at the “Bibliotheca Arabica” project (Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig). She is trained in the fields of Arabic, Islamic, Persian, and Roman Studies, and published on Arabic poetry, hadith, and manuscript studies.

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