Saleroom Fiction versus Provenance (Schøyen 1776)

Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 brill.com/jim Saleroom Fiction versus Provenance Historicizing Manuscripts via Their Marginal and Material Logic (Schøyen Fragments 1776) Konrad Hirschler | orcid: 0000-0002-6012-7711 Universität Hamburg, Hamburg, Germany [email protected] Received August 17, 2020 | Accepted June 4, 2021 Abstract 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. Keywords provenance – Ayyubid and Mamluk Syria – fragments – reuse practices – material philology – manuscript notes – ḥadīth scholarship – Occidental fragments © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2022 | doi:10.1163/1878464X-01301001 2 1 hirschler Introduction As researchers, we encounter ‘our’ manuscripts at one specific stage of their life cycle; generally in the reading room of a modern library’s special collection. Here, the manuscript carries a classmark (such as Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, suppl. turc 983) and scholarship cites it using this modern identity. If a location can be ascribed to a manuscript’s past, this generally reflects the moment of production so that it might be a ‘North African’ or ‘Egyptian’ manuscript. In some libraries, the manuscript might carry a more informative classmark, indicating the name of the manuscript trader who sold the object to the library, (such as Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Wetzstein ii 1595). Yet, the manuscripts that, today, are on the shelves of a modern library had a much more colourful trajectory than a linear move from, let us say, Cairo to Paris and there is no reason to prioritize in this colourful trajectory the role of one single (typically European or US-American) trader, in our example Johann Gottfried Wetzstein (1815–1905).1 The lack of information on these trajectories renders the manuscripts we use in the reading rooms decontextualized objects bereft of their history or reduced to a Eurocentric history. The social and cultural contexts in which historical actors in West Asia and North Africa owned, endowed, gifted, moved, stole, lent, borrowed, read, copied, bound, rebound, repaired, palimpsested, and damaged these items are thus silenced and marginalized. Over the past two decades, scholarship has increasingly framed the question of the different stages in the trajectory of an object in terms of provenance research. In art history, this search for the provenance of the object has itself become an enormous field of research.2 The field of studying Arabic/Arabicscript written artefacts has only begun to engage with this question in terms of ethical considerations, but there is now discernible movement.3 What has happened to a larger extent in our field is to embark on the quest to reconstitute 1 On Wetzstein, see Boris Liebrenz and Christoph Rauch, eds., Manuscripts, Politics and Oriental Studies. Life and Collections of Johann Gottfried Wetzstein (1815–1905) in Context (Leiden: Brill, 2019). 2 For instance, Eva Blimlinger and Heinz Schödl, ed., Die Praxis des Sammelns. Personen und Institutionen im Fokus der Provenienzforschung (Wien: Böhlau, 2014). 3 In the field of documentary studies, see, for instance, the post by Cecilia Palombo and Birte Kristiansen https://emco.hcommons.org/2021/03/19/it‑belongs‑in‑a‑museum‑or‑does ‑it/, the Leiden Roundtable on Documentary Sources, Heritage Politics, and Civic Engagement (https://emco.hcommons.org/events/event/working‑with‑collections‑a‑roundtable‑on​ ‑documentary‑sources‑heritage‑politics‑and‑civic‑engagement/) and the 2020 Joint statement on the papyrus trade by the Association Internationale de Papyrologues (aip) and the American Society of Papyrologists (asp). Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance 3 the ‘biography of things’4 and the main trend in this line of research is the work on manuscript notes, such as that by Boris Liebrenz.5 Yet, we are still far from systematically thinking of the manuscripts we handle as objects with complex historical life cycles and rich stories of provenance. The present article takes a group of twelve decontextualized parchment fragments to which highly hypothetical historical trajectories have been ascribed since they first emerged on the market. Between 1993 and 2020, these fragments sat in the Schøyen collection in Oslo and London with the classmark 1776/1 to 1776/12. In July 2020, the Schøyen collection sold these fragments as part of an auction conducted by Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions (London) under the heading The History of Western Script: A Selection from The Schøyen Collection, in Celebration of the Collector’s Eightieth Birthday.6 Their new owner, Sam Fogg Ltd. (London), uses the internal reference number 19822, but I will refer to them by their Schøyen classmarks, as these have become established in scholarship.7 This article is meant to show how an interest in the materiality of manuscripts and the marginal texts they carry is crucial for understanding provenance and for properly contextualizing even highly fragmentary items. We know little about these items’ trajectories before they gained their modern identity as classmarks 1776/1 to 1776/12 in the Schøyen collection and even their points of production are unclear. They are a very colourful group: Four fragments are blank (except for Arabic marginalia) and the other eight fragments are in three different languages (Latin, Armenian, and Greek) and thus also in three different scripts (see illustrations 2 to 14 and table 1). Faced with such a cacophonic group of objects, the main question in terms of provenance is therefore, at what point in their respective life cycles did they converge to become the corpus known as Schøyen collection 1776/1 to 1776/12? How and when did Latin fragments of the Bible join an Armenian book of prayers, Greek liturgical texts, and blank sheets? This article will argue that the answer to this question lies very much in studying the Arabic marginalia and the objects’ materiality. In order to understand the social and cultural practices that turned these fragments into one corpus, we have to bring into the picture the Arabic notes written on all of these parchments (see illustrations 2 to 14 and table 2). 4 Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,” in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 64–91. 5 Boris Liebrenz, Die Rifāʿīya aus Damaskus: Eine Privatbibliothek im osmanischen Syrien und ihr kulturelles Umfeld (Leiden: Brill, 2016). 6 Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions’ catalogue, 8 July 2020, auction no. 14328: lot no. 46, pp. 76– 79. 7 The fragments were still in the possession of Sam Fogg Ltd. as of June 2021. Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 4 table 1 hirschler The main texts in the Schøyen collection 1776 corpus Schøyen Language Content8 1776 Century9 Single folio/ bifolio 1 2 3 4 12? 12? 12? 12? c. ¼ of folio folio bifolio bifolio 12? 12? 10 9 or 10 bifolio c. 1/3 of bifolio bifolio bifolio bifolia 5 6 7 8 9–12 Latin Latin Latin Latin Bible (Mt 11:17–29, Mt 12:6–25) Burchard of Worms, Decreta Bible (Malachi 1:14–2:10) Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Evangelia Armenian book of prayers (Žamagirk) Armenian Psalter Greek liturgy (Menaion) Greek liturgy (collection of hymns) blank Blank At the same time, we must consider reuse practices that are evident from the way manuscript owners and users folded and turned these fragments to repurpose them. Looking at the marginal and the material will show that medieval Damascene Arabic manuscript culture played the crucial role in shaping this mostly Latin, Greek, and Armenian corpus. As mentioned, the information we currently have on the provenance of these parchments is sparse and—to put it mildly—quite fictional. Only their 8 I thank Julian Yolles for helping with Schøyen 1776/1–4. He discusses these fragments in his forthcoming book Making the East Latin. The Latin Culture of the Twelfth-Century Levant. The description of Schøyen 1776/7–8 is based on Francesco D’Aiuto, “Un antico inno per la Resurrezione (con nuove testimonianze di ’scrittura mista’ d’area orientale),” Rivista di studi bizantini e needlelike, n.s. 45 (2008): 3–136 and Francesco D’Aiuto, “Sopravvivenza e riuso dell’“Inno alfabetico Schøyen” nel Tropologio Sin. gr. ne mg 56+ 5 e in antichi manoscritti greci dell’Ottoeco e georgiani dello Iadgari”, Nea Rhōmē 16 (2019) [2020] [= Kēpos aeithalēs. Studi in ricordo di Augusta Acconcia Longo, iv, a cura di F. D’Aiuto—S. Lucà—A. Luzzi]. The description of Schøyen 1776/5–6, 9–12 is based on the Sotheby’s catalogue, 6 December 1993, sale 93680: lot no. 3. 9 In the cases of Schøyen 1776/7–8, the dates are taken from D’Aiuto, “Un antico inno per la Resurrezione”. In the cases of Schøyen 1776/1–6, 9–12, the dates are taken from the Sotheby’s catalogue, 6 December 1993, sale 93680: lot no. 3. However, the dates of the fragments given in this catalogue have to be considered as very tentative. D’Aiuto, “Un antico inno per la Resurrezione”, has shown that the Sotheby’s dates for the Greek fragments were off the mark by two centuries at least. The dates in the catalogue seem to be a result of the assumption that the pieces had been originally housed in Frankish Jerusalem. Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance 5 trajectory in recent decades is clear: They first became visible as a corpus when they were offered at auction by Sotheby’s in London on 6 December 1993, and the auction catalogue briefly describes the fragments for the first time (see annex 2). This moment has left its traces on the fragments: The Sotheby’s catalogue lists them with the letters A–H10 and we still find the corresponding letter on each of these fragments (for instance, the letter ‘A’ turned upside down in illustration 2 in the bottom right corner). At the 1993 Sotheby auction, the bookseller company Bernard Quaritch purchased the fragments on behalf of Martin Schøyen for a price of £12,000.11 Subsequently, they entered the Schøyen collection where they were given the classmark 1776. Again, this transfer left a trace: on each of the fragments we find the corresponding classmark (for instance, ‘ms 1776/1’ in illustration 2 in the bottom left corner). The sequence of these Schøyen classmarks (1776/1, 1776/2, etc.) follows that of Sotheby’s letters (1776/1=A, 1776/2=B, etc.). When the fragments returned to the market in the 2020 auction, the fragments were again listed with the letters A–H (see annex 3). The most recent owner, Sam Fogg Ltd., follows what by now has become the established order of the fragments when using the reference numbers 19822/1 to 19822/12. The latest set of pictures produced in August 2020, after the sale, shows that this reference number has—thankfully—not been written onto the fragments. How the pieces came to London in the early 1990s is much less clear and the Sotheby’s catalogue is conspicuously silent on this issue. However, there must have been some information around as the Schøyen catalogue subsequently stated that an anonymous ‘private owner, Damascus’ sold these pieces to Sotheby’s in 1993.12 What we have here is very close to what Stephennie Mulder has called a ‘no-provenance provenance’, similar to the old standby ‘Private Swiss Collection’13—that is a pseudo-provenance with the main function of hiding the actual provenance. Yet, a Damascene origin of these fragments, as given in the Schøyen catalogue, is actually very likely and the following will show that these pieces indeed have a Damascene background stretching back to the seventh/thirteenth century. Whether the fragments were directly moved from Damascus to London in 1993 is much less clear. At least, the anonymous pre-Sotheby’s owner left traces 10 11 12 13 The four blank fragments did not receive a letter. Letter Christopher De Hamel (Sotheby’s) to Bernard Hamilton (Nottingham), 17 February 1994 (in private possession). https://www.schoyencollection.com/24‑smaller‑collections/childrens‑literature/homilia ry‑st‑gregory‑ms‑1776‑04 (accessed 22.8.2019). Cf. the #noprovenanceprovenance hashtag on Twitter used in 2020 (accessed 17 July 2020). Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 6 hirschler on the fragments that show that they a) had been in an Arabic-speaking context and b) left his or her ownership (in Damascus?) in the shape of the corpus that we have today. This is evident from another provenance-relevant trace: On all fragments we find an Arabic number (generally encircled) in pencil, such as the number ‘٤’ (‘4’) at the bottom of illustration 2. These twelve numbers do not follow the same sequence as the letters used by Sotheby’s (and thus the classmarks in the Schøyen collection and the reference numbers of Sam Fogg Ltd.). For instance, the fragment with the Arabic number ‘1’ became ‘E’ in the Sotheby’s catalogue and subsequently 1776/5 in the Schøyen collection.14 Yet, these numbers run from 1 to 12, clearly showing that the fragments had already been one single corpus before they were offered by Sotheby’s in 1993. We can also assume that the pre-Sotheby’s corpus did not include any further pieces as we find no number ‘13’ or above. As the 1980s and the 1990s saw a significant movement of written artefacts out of Syria, it is at least feasible that these pieces reached Sotheby’s from Damascus. The only further available bit of ‘information’ takes us back some 800 years: The Sotheby’s auction catalogue makes two surprisingly bold statements (the fragments, so it states, ‘suggest only one source’), namely that, firstly, these fragments had been part of the Crusader library of the sacristy of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem and that, secondly, the Muslim conquerors under Saladin carried them off in 1187 (see annex 2). However, this statement turns out to be nothing more than an informed guess on the basis that the Holy Sepulchre housed the largest Frankish (or ‘Crusader’) library in the region.15 Obviously, it is highly likely that the Frankish identity ascribed to the four Latin fragments is historically accurate. Yet, this assumption is much weaker when it comes to the Armenian and Greek pieces. There is nothing to link these pieces produced within the indigenous Christian communities of the Middle East to Frankish rule in Palestine. In addition, the four blank fragments obviously do not carry any information on who produced them or when. It is thus fair to say that the argument for the shared Frankish (or Jerusalem and even Holy Sepulchre) provenance of the non-Latin fragments is on distinctively weak grounds. Consequently, the assumption that Saladin must have carried all of them off is an equally flimsy hypothesis. We would love to know more about the movements of Frankish books after Saladin’s conquest. The catalogue’s statement that ‘these are relics from the manuscripts carried off by the Saracens when 14 15 The correspondences are 1=E=1776/5; 2=G=1776/7; 3=C=1776/2; 4=A=1776/1; 5=C=1776/3; 6=H=1776/8; 7=D=1776/4; 9=1776/9; 10=1776/10; 11=1776/11; 12=1776/11. Letter Christopher De Hamel (Sotheby’s) to Bernard Hamilton (Nottingham), 17 February 1994 (in private possession). Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance 7 the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem fell to Saladin in October 1187’ is not only worrying in terms of terminology (‘Saracens’), but implies a depth of knowledge on these events that simply does not exist. The Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions’ catalogue uncritically repeats these unsubstantiated statements in 2020 and claims that the fragments come ‘[a]lmost certainly from a library in the Holy City of Jerusalem, probably that of the Holy Sepulchre itself, the epicentre of Christendom and Christian devotion.’16 In sum, the little we know of the pre-1993 provenance of these parchments is meant to obscure (‘private owner’), overtly optimistic in its specificity (‘Crusader fragments’), and underlain with an Orientalist framing of Muslim conquerors carrying off European books. The one solid trace on the production context comes from Francesco D’Aiuto, the only scholar to date who has dedicated an in-depth study to any of the fragments. He argued on the basis of paleographical evidence that one of our Greek pieces, Schøyen 1776/8, originated in Bilād al-Shām.17 The Sotheby’s catalogue (and subsequently the Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions’ catalogue) also surmised that the fragments ‘are believed to have survived in Damascus’ after they were supposedly taken from Jerusalem. We will see in the following that this assumption of Damascus as the focal point of decisive stages in these fragment’s life cycles is accurate, but that a much more specific argument can be made than mere ‘survival.’ Namely, medieval Damascene manuscript producers and users repurposed these fragments for a very specific material function and turned them into the corpus that has survived until today. 2 The Material Logic: The Arabic Notes as Corpus Markers There is one element that all these fragments share: the notes in Arabic. These notes have a particularly ambiguous status since the pieces first appeared on the market in 1993. On the one hand, they have been marginalized as the fragments were sold in 1993 and in 2020 as part of Western manuscript auctions. On the other hand, these notes were entirely misread and used for marketing the fragments in what is certainly a rather egregious case of cultural ignorance and arrogance. The analysis of these Arabic manuscript notes as provenancerelevant traces is at the centre of this section and will prove crucial for building the article’s central argument on the historical trajectory of the 1776 fragments. 16 17 Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions’ catalogue, 8 July 2020, auction no. 14328: lot no. 46, p. 76. D’Aiuto, “Un antico inno per la Resurrezione,” 73. Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 8 hirschler The Sotheby’s catalogue announced that some of the Arabic notes are actually titles of the ‘Tales of the Arabian Nights’ (or Thousand and One Nights), the ‘most quintessential of Middle Eastern romances’ (see annex 2). This misreading made its way into the Schøyen catalogue where 1776/4, for instance, was described as ‘Thousand and One Nights’ and was classified as ‘Children’s Literature’.18 Moreover, when the fragments were sold in 2020, the Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions’ catalogue now offered these fragments under the heading of ‘Kitab Alif [sic!] Laila, the Book of One Thousand and One Nights, in Arabic […]’ (see annex 3). The identification of these notes as being linked to the Thousand and One Nights is fantasy, pure and simple. Rather, as we will see below, these Arabic notes exclusively refer to books in the field of ḥadīth, the reports on the sayings and deeds ascribed to the Prophet Muḥammad. The Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions’ catalogue even ‘translated’ some of these Arabic notes so that they fit the Thousand and One Nights fiction: For instance, the catalogue translates the note on fragment 1776/5 as ‘The fifth part of the twistings/turnings[?].’ In contrast to this highly creative version of imaginate philology, the note actually reads ‘The fifth part of the Ḥinnāʾīyāt,’ referring to the fifth volume of ḥadīths transmitted by the scholar al-Ḥinnāʾī (d. 459/1066–1067).19 One can see that the story of a group of Crusader manuscripts held in the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem (seemingly ‘on the very edge of the world,’ according to the Sotheby’s catalogue), carried off by Saladin’s ‘Saracens’ (‘of breathtaking importance as witnesses to the fall of Jerusalem,’ according to the Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions’ catalogue) and subsequently reused for the Thousand and One Nights in Damascus was just too spectacular a story to miss. In 2020, these fragments had even become, according to the auction catalogue, philological gems, namely, they were now ‘among the earliest manuscript witnesses to that text [the Thousand and One Nights].’20 That the twelve fragments sold in 1993 for a hammer price of £12,000 and in 2020 for £ 48,000 (roughly double the price adjusting for inflation) indicates that these creative marketing efforts were quite successful in financial terms.21 Yet, to sell unprovenanced artefacts 18 19 20 21 https://www.schoyencollection.com/24‑smaller‑collections/childrens‑literature/homilia ry‑st‑gregory‑ms‑1776‑04 (accessed 22 August 2019). Al-Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh al-islām wa-wafayāt al-mashāhīr wa-al-aʿlām, ed. ʿU.ʿA. Tadmurī, Beirut 1987–2000, years 451–460, 467–468. Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions’ catalogue, 8 July 2020, auction no. 14328: lot no. 46, p. 78. For the 2020 sale price, see https://auctions.dreweatts.com/past‑auctions/blooms1‑10012/​ lot‑details/f973e60e‑9cd9‑43a5‑8e0d‑abcd00be332b (accessed 7 October 2020). To this have to be added 25% buyer’s premium and taxes. Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance 9 from the Middle East and to do so by misrepresenting one of the core textual genres of the Muslim faith, ḥadīth, as the Thousand and One Nights for marketing purposes might strike some observers as ethically debatable. Framing these fragments as belonging to one of those ‘Oriental’ texts actually known to a Western audience not only entirely misrepresents them but, at the same time, this framing silences the crucial evidence for studying the actual provenance of these fragments beyond stories of Crusaders and Muslim raiders. These notes are so important because they allow the fragments to be traced back to one specific city, namely, Damascus, and thus to re-inscribe them in their historical context. The Arabic notes come in different formats and fulfil different functions (see table 2 and for full details see annex 1). The most striking type of these notes are those that are book titles: Eleven fragments carry such a title note. The only one without a title, fragment 1776/1, is the smallest fragment and it is highly likely that the part of the original page that is now lost also once carried a title.22 These Arabic book titles have no direct link to the respective main text in Latin, Armenian, or Greek. However, they are of crucial importance to us as these additions indicate a point when these folia entered a new stage of their life cycle. As we will see below, these book titles are an expression of reuse practices: medieval Arabic-speaking Muslim Damascene manuscript owners and users added the titles after they had repurposed the parchments as wrappers for producing ḥadīth booklets. In addition to the titles, we find further notes in Arabic on the fragments that fall into six distinct groups: (a) notes referring to the act of endowing (waqf ) the ḥadīth book in question; (b) an ownership note of the ḥadīth book; (c) notes of textual transmission linked to the respective ḥadīth book; and (d) lists of names, most likely also linked to the transmission of the ḥadīth book. There are also three notes that draw the reader’s attention to the (e) content of the ḥadīth book that was once wrapped into the fragment in question. Finally, one single fragment (again Schøyen 1776/1 is the odd one out) carries (f) poetry. The importance of all these notes is that those writing them acted in one very specific and surprisingly narrow cultural and social context. As the following will show, the moment when the Schøyen collection 1776 fragments first became a historically visible corpus is thus closely tied to their medieval Arabic usage context as evident from the manuscript notes. 22 The materiality of this small fragment shows that it was used for the same purpose as the other fragments, the wrapper function defined below: It has stitching holes and the fold clearly shows. Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 10 hirschler table 2 The Arabic notes in the Schøyen collection 1776 corpus Schøyen Title waqf Transmission Ownership Names Content Poetry Hand 1776 of iah 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × × The titles written on these fragments share two striking features: They are linked to works in one single field of knowledge, namely ḥadīth, and they are connected to one single city, Damascus. For instance, Schøyen 1776/2 has the title Vilifying the Hypocrite, which is the 127th part of the long-running ḥadīth series by the Damascene scholar Ibn ʿAsākir (d. 571/1176).23 Schøyen 1776/3 is entitled Ten Teaching Sessions, a series of meetings in which the scholar alḤurfī (d. 423/1031–1032) transmitted ḥadīth.24 The title of Schøyen 1776/4 refers to the first and second part of a work of ḥadīth read to the scholar al-Wazīr (d. 391/1001). Schøyen 1776/5, as seen above, is the fifth part of the Ḥinnāʾīyāt, ḥadīths that the Damascene scholar al-Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad al-Ḥinnāʾī alDimashqī (d. 459/1066–1067)25 transmitted, and so the list of ḥadīth-related titles goes on. The Damascene identity of these fragments is evident from some of the author-compilers of the titles just named, who were clearly connected with the city, especially Ibn ʿAsākir. In addition, we find in Schøyen 1776/11 and Schøyen 1776/12 a crucial figure in Damascene ḥadīth scholarship, Ḍiyāʾ alDīn al-Maqdisī (d. 643/1245). In addition to the author-compilers of the Arabic 23 24 25 Al-Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh al-islām, years 571–580, 70–82. Al-Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh al-islām, years 421–430, 107–108. Al-Dhahabī, Taʾrīkh al-islām, years 451–460, 467–468. Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance 11 books who have a clear Damascene profile, we see that the subsequent engagement with these books indicates similar connections. Among the endowment notes we find one by a certain Ibn al-Muḥibb, in fragment Schøyen 1776/3 (he also appears in the list of names in Schøyen 1776/7). This is ʿAbd Allāh b. Aḥmad al-Maqdisī (d. 737/1336) who, as Said Aljoumani has shown, endowed numerous manuscripts into the Ḍiyāʾīya Madrasa in Damascus.26 Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn alMaqdisī founded this madrasa in the seventh/thirteenth century and it became one of the most active centres of ḥadīth scholarship in the city. Finally, there is codicological evidence suggesting a Damascene provenance: On three of the fragments we see the very distinct hand of a scholar who lived in Damascus in the late ninth/fifteenth century, Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī (d. 909/1503), who will play a prominent role in the following as well (see illustrations 2 [poetry], 5 [content note] and 6 [content note]). Conveniently for us, Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī never left Damascus and was the epitome of a local scholar.27 His unusual hand is thus further proof of the Damascene life cycle of these parchments that has nothing whatsoever to do with the Thousand and One Nights. 3 The Material Logic: Parchment Reuse and ḥadīth Scholarship in Damascus In order to understand why the field of ḥadīth and Damascus play the prominent role in these fragments’ life cycle that the Arabic marginalia suggest, we must turn to the fragments’ material logic. These fragments are parchment folia that were taken out of (Latin, Armenian or Greek) books; the Arabic-speaking Damascene manuscript producers folded these folia into bifolia,28 they laid them around new small booklets as wrappers, and they wrote the title of these new booklets on the wrappers. The Arabic titles are always on the left folio of the ‘recto’ when the bifolio is spread out and once the parchment is folded to enwrap a booklet, the fold is always on the right-hand side. They were thus positioned in a way that made them a title page when the bifolia was wrapped around the new booklet in a right-to-left script such as Arabic. The ‘original’ Latin, Armenian, or Greek parchment books that our fragments came from 26 27 28 Said Aljoumani and Konrad Hirschler, Muʾallafāt Yūsuf b. Ḥasan Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī wamusāhamatuhu fī ḥifẓ al-turāth al-fikrī (Leiden: Brill, 2021). Konrad Hirschler, A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture. The Library of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2020), ch. 1. Ten of the fragments are bifolia (Schøyen 1776/3 to 1776/12) and it is likely that the two other small fragments were bifolia too (Schøyen 1776/1 and 1776/2). Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 12 hirschler figure 1 Drawing of booklet with a parchment added as wrapper based on: gacek, vademecum, 107. © brill/adam gacek were often quite large. What we see with Schøyen 1776/7 is how what used to be a single Greek folio was converted into a bifolio when the subsequent Arabicspeaking Damascene users turned it by 90 degrees, folded it, and put their Arabic title on it. The manuscript producers sewed these parchment wrappers onto the booklets. For instance, illustration 9 shows stitching holes in the ‘new’ fold that could not have been made when the parchment was still in its original Greek codex. This practice of reusing ‘old’ parchments as wrappers carrying an Arabic title was a distinctive feature of the Damascene manuscript culture of ‘postcanonical’ ḥadīth scholarship between the sixth/twelfth and eighth/fourteenth centuries. Ḥadīths had started to circulate right after the development of Islam and, from the third/ninth century onwards, these traditions were increasingly subject to a process of ‘canonization.’ As a result, authoritative written collections of ḥadīths, most famously those by the two scholars al-Bukhārī (d. 256/ 870) and Muslim (d. 261/875), came into being. These collections established a (never entirely fixed) canon of traditions that was increasingly deemed authentic—a process that lasted well into the sixth/twelfth century.29 However, this process of canonization was controversial as it prioritized the written mode of transmission to the detriment of oral practices. The field of ḥadīth scholarship reacted to the challenges of the canonization process by developing an ‘ideology of orality.’ This asserted that the continuous oral transmission of the traditions had a value in its own right as an essential and distinctive trait of the Muslim community. Continuing to orally transmit traditions, irrespective of the existence of the written authoritative collections, was reconfigured as an act of piety linking each generation anew to the Prophet.30 This ‘post-canonical’ reconfiguration of the field of ḥadīth studies resulted in the emergence of new textual genres. In material terms, the rise of postcanonical ḥadīth transmission meant that short collections of ḥadīths, in book29 30 Jonathan A.C. Brown, The Canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim: The Formation and Function of the Sunnī Ḥadīth Canon (Leiden: Brill, 2007). Garrett Davidson, Carrying on the Tradition: A Social and Intellectual History of Hadith Transmission Across a Millennium (Leiden: Brill 2020). Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance 13 let form, became extraordinarily popular in Damascus from the sixth/twelfth century onwards—my estimate is that a high four-digit number of them was produced. Rather than directly engaging with the grand ‘canonical’ collections of al-Bukhārī, Muslim, and so on, many ḥadīth scholars of this period—one of the most productive of them being the above-mentioned Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn alMaqdisī—centred their activities on these brief collections that (mostly) contained ḥadīths ultimately drawn from those canonical collections. As shown elsewhere, these booklets were very cheap to produce and they were clearly objects for everyday use—they were emphatically not books with high-quality paper, fine bindings, decorations, or a careful mise-en-page.31 Their small size explains why and how what used to be a single folio in an original Latin, Greek, or Armenian manuscript could easily be converted into a bifolio when used for a ḥadīth booklet. The distinctive feature of these small booklets is the reuse of fragments as outside ‘wrappers’, often turned by 90 degrees, with the Arabic title written on them. Manuscript producers and users in Ayyubid and Mamluk Damascus furnished their booklets with such ‘protective wrappers’ as the post-canonical ḥadīth booklets were generally used unbound. These producers and users laid old parchment sheets around their paper booklets to at least provide these vulnerable items with a sturdy wrapper. Reusing parchment sheets gave their booklets some protection from the vicissitudes of usage that included water spillage, inattentive users ripping off the front page, being stuffed into bags, and so on. In my work on this phenomenon, I have so far identified some 400 reuse fragments in various scripts and languages, referred to henceforth as the ‘reuse corpus.’32 Among the parchments in this reuse corpus, we find numerous Arabic documents and fragments of Arabic texts. Yet, we also find the exact equivalent of the fragments in the Schøyen collection 1776 corpus: parchments from texts in various other languages and scripts. The wider Damascene reuse corpus contains a colourful combination of parchments in Greek, Latin, Syriac, Hebrew, Georgian, and Armenian. This reuse corpus has hitherto only included parchments that, today, remain bound into Arabic manuscripts. The Schøyen 31 32 For more details, see Hirschler, Monument and Konrad Hirschler, “The Materiality of Ḥadīth Scholarship in the Post-Canonical Period,” in Beyond Authenticity. Towards Alternative Approaches to Ḥadīth Narrations and Collections, ed. Mohammad Gharaibeh (Leiden: Brill 2021, forthcoming). For more details on the Damascene reuse corpus, see Konrad Hirschler, “Books within Books: The Link between Damascene Reuse Fragments and the Qubbat al-Khazna,” in The Damascus Fragments: Towards a History of the Qubbat al-khazna Corpus of Manuscripts and Documents, ed. Arianna D’Ottone Rambach, Konrad Hirschler and Ronny Vollandt (Beirut 2020): 439–473. Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 14 hirschler 1776 fragments are the first stand-alone pieces that are completely detached from the booklets they once enwrapped and that can be added to this corpus. 4 Combining Marginal and Material Logic: Seventh/Thirteenth-Century Damascus as a Point of Convergence The Arabic notes on the fragments in the Schøyen 1776 corpus are thus not just random scribbles (and certainly not linked to the Thousand and One Nights), but part of a widespread feature of medieval Damascene manuscript culture. With this insight we can then identify the very specific historical context of how these fragments were embedded in the much wider phenomenon of the reuse corpus that characterized manuscript production in Damascus between the sixth/twelfth and eighth/fourteenth centuries. This, in turn, enables us to uncover more specific contexts in which these parchments were reused; that is, to start looking for the actual booklets to which these fragments had once been attached. For this purpose, it is very convenient that the vast majority of Damascene post-canonical ḥadīth booklets was produced in one copy only. The titles on our fragments make it thus feasible to look for the exact booklet that the fragments had once enwrapped. As a result of this exercise, it was possible to match ten of the fragments with the booklet to which they had once belonged. These are all booklets that are today held in the National al-Asad Library in Damascus (see table 3). For instance, parchment Schøyen 1776/7 with the Greek liturgical text served as a wrapper for the booklet that in the National al-Asad Library carries today the classmark 3757/9. Illustration 15 shows what is today the first (or ‘title’) folio of this paper booklet. It makes sense that the producer of this booklet wrote the exact title that appears on this folio also on our parchment fragment because, when the Schøyen 1776/7 fragment was serving as a wrapper, this was the first page the reader would have encountered. These booklets obviously provide a wealth of additional data on Damascene manuscript production and circulation as they are—typically so for these booklets—overflowing with dozens of notes of transmission identifying where the manuscript circulated and hundreds of names from the Damascene scholarly communities. For instance, illustration 15 shows that this booklet carries a note of transmission in the distinct hand of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī—the same hand that we find in fragments Schøyen 1776/1, 1776/4, and 1776/5. However, an analysis of all the data and names that we find in the booklets that once carried our fragments would divert us from the main aim of this article and is part of a different project; the main point that is relevant here, the Damascene provenance, has by now been firmly established. Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 15 saleroom fiction versus provenance table 3 The Schøyen collection 1776 corpus and the matching of extant ḥadīth booklets Schøyen 1776 National al-Asad Library fihrist of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī33 1 (no title) 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 n/a 3758/8 3782/13 3774/6 3829/9 no secure match 3757/9 1178/2 3783/1636 3758/7 3757/13 3758/5 n/a 423e 400m not listed34 441i n/a35 404i 442d n/a 423d 404q 423b However, one point merits further discussion, namely, when exactly manuscript producers and users reused the Schøyen fragments as wrappers for their booklets. The dates show a conveniently narrow corridor of one century, the seventh/thirteenth century. Out of the ten fragments that can be matched with extant booklets (and where the reuse is thus dateable) seven fall in this century.37 One booklet (ms 3783/16) dates to the early eighth/fourteenth century (the one that once carried Schøyen 1776/9), one booklet (ms 3758/7) dates to the late sixth/twelfth century (the one that once carried Schøyen 1776/10), and only 33 34 35 36 37 The numbers given here refer to the numbers assigned in Hirschler, Monuments. Yāsīn al-Sawwās, Fihris majāmīʿ al-Madrasa al-ʿUmarīya fī Dār al-Kutub al-Ẓāhirīya biDimashq (Kuwait: Jāmiʿat al-Duwal al-ʿArabīya/Maʿhad al-Makhṭūṭāt al-ʿArabīya, 1987), 191/2. The surviving part of this title is too generic to attempt to match it with an extant manuscript. Manuscript Damascus, National al-Asad Library 3759/4 is one possibility, but there are insufficient grounds to match it conclusively. With the fragment Schøyen 1776/6 comes also a small slip of paper with the title of another book (‘The Book of Murūʾa and what has been written on this’), but it not clear whether this slip has any link to fragment Schøyen 1776/6. A manuscript with exactly this title is the manuscript Damascus, National al-Asad Library 3792/1 (Hirschler, Monument, entry 532a). This booklet carries a generic title on its current title page (fol. 120a: al-Fawāʾid al-ṣiḥāḥ wa-al-gharāʾib), but the title visible on our fragment (al-Mahrawānīyāt) is mentioned at the end of the booklet (fol. 133b). These are fragments Schøyen 1776/2, 1776/3, 1776/4, 1776/5, 1776/8, 1776/11, and 1776/12. Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 16 hirschler one booklet (ms 3757/9) dates to a significantly earlier period (the one that once carried Schøyen 1776/7). However, in this last case we see that scholars transmitted this booklet intensively in the seventh/thirteenth century. It is thus possible and likely that users enwrapped this old booklet with a parchment at this point to provide additional protection during this period of intensive usage.38 The reuse practice evident from the Arabic notes on the Schøyen fragments and their material logic thus provides us with a firm point of provenance in regional and chronological terms—Damascus in the seventh/thirteenth century. At this point, parchments from Greek, Latin, Syriac, Hebrew, Georgian, and Armenian books must have been widely available on the city’s book markets. 5 The Schøyen Fragments and Their Pre-reuse Trajectory beyond Saracen Warfare and Plunder: Bringing in the Qubbat al-Khazna With seventh/thirteenth-century Damascus emerging as a firm anchor point of these fragments’ trajectory, it is possible to look at prior stages in their life cycles. The most striking feature of the Schøyen fragments is that those eight fragments that carry a main text come from non-Arabic Christian contexts. It is this combination that caused the authors of the Sotheby’s catalogue to assume that ‘the Saracens’ obtained the fragments in the context of warfare or, in the words of the 2020 catalogue, made ‘this clutch of fragments […] of breathtaking importance as witnesses to the fall of Jerusalem.’39 However, as we have seen, these fragments are part of a much larger reuse corpus in Damascene manuscripts and they were certainly not, as argued in the Sotheby’s catalogue, ‘perhaps the first Latin books ever seen by the Saracens’. Numerous extant parchment wrappers in Damascene manuscripts show that the reuse of parchments in a variety of languages and scripts was part of a much more widespread practice.40 The reuse corpus in Damascene manuscripts, to which we can now add the Schøyen fragments, has a very peculiar profile. It includes the non-Arabic parchments on which this article focuses and also Arabic documents (in particular those relating to marriage, divorce, and real-estate deals) and parchments 38 39 40 Manuscript Damascus, National al-Asad Library, 3757/9, fols. 166b and 167a carry transmission notes dating to this century. Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions’ catalogue, 8 July 2020, auction no. 14328: lot no. 46, p. 76. For example, ms Damascus, National al-Asad Library 1039; Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, ms Supplément Turc 986. Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance 17 from Arabic books (in particular books written in Maghribī script). As argued elsewhere, the peculiar profile of the reuse corpus in Damascene ḥadīth booklets matches what we know about the manuscripts and fragments that had once been housed in the under-researched Qubbat al-khazna in Damascus.41 The Qubba stands in the courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque (see illustration 16) and served a function roughly equivalent to that of its much more famous cousin in Cairo, the Geniza: Both served as depositories of worn-out books and disused documents. With over 200,000 items, the Qubba material is roughly as extensive as the material from Cairo (though counting such ‘items’ is never an exact science). The obvious difference between these two depositories is that the Geniza mostly contained material emanating from a Jewish community while the Qubba predominantly stored material produced within a Muslim community. The second major difference is that the Geniza has generated a fully-fledged field of research in the course of the past century. The Qubba, by contrast, has so far remained marginal in the field of Middle Eastern history.42 The overlap between the very peculiar profiles of the Damascene reuse corpus and the Qubba corpus makes it highly likely that these two corpora were historically linked. More specifically, Damascene manuscript producers and users accessed the Qubba in order to source parchment fragments.43 This happened probably via the city’s book and paper markets, which catered for such customers. In Damascus, these markets, the massive book binders’ market and the paper market (sūq al-warrāqīn) were just to the west of the Umayyad Mosque in Bāb al-Barīd.44 As we know that our twelve fragments were part of this reuse corpus, it is highly likely that they, too, had been held in the Qubba before they made their way, together with hundreds of other fragments, via these markets into the Damascene post-canonical ḥadīth booklets. The Qubba is thus the most likely site of the previous stage of the life cycles of these fragments. This shared trajectory explains why the Schøyen fragments, the wider Damascene reuse corpus, and the Qubba all exhibit this fascinating multilingual and multiscriptural profile—and thus mirror a ‘multilingual and multicultural society.’45 We do not know who deposited what books and fragments in the Qubba, 41 42 43 44 45 Hirschler, “Books within Books”. The first book devoted to this depository is Arianna D’Ottone Rambach, Konrad Hirschler and Ronny Vollandt, ed., The Damascus Fragments: Towards a History of the Qubbat alkhazna Corpus of Manuscripts and Documents (Beirut 2020). Hirschler, “Books within Books”. Hirschler, Monument, chapter 2. Arianna D’Ottone, “Manuscripts as Mirrors of a Multilingual and Multicultural Soci- Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 18 hirschler nor when; consequently, it is impossible at this stage to pursue the quest for provenance any deeper into the past. However, I want to underline at least that the presence of these items in Damascus was not necessarily the outcome of warfare and Muslim raiders as assumed in the Sotheby’s catalogue. Explaining the translocation of non-Arabic fragments towards Damascus in this vein is not uncommon. One of the first modern scholars working on Qubba material, Hermann von Soden, was also quite certain how the presence of non-Arabic and non-Muslim fragments in this depository could be explained: It was ‘probably [Muslim] fanaticism, which tore these parchments into pieces to seal them away in the qubba, even traces of blood are evident.’46 Such attitudes towards the movement of Frankish and Christian books during and after the Crusader period certainly have a long genealogy that cannot be analysed at length in this article. However, it is at least striking how similar these words are, even if the terminology is slightly different, to those of the Dominican friar Riccoldo of Montecroce in the late seventh/thirteenth century in the aftermath of the fall of Frankish Acre. He framed the fate of Christian books, which he saw in Nineveh (in modern Iraq), as ‘being scattered throughout the world like captives and slaves of the Saracens [i.e. Muslims] and Tartars [i.e. Mongols].’47 These attitudes, in turn, are obviously part of the common topos of book and library destruction to frame the Other—topoi that often have little factual value, as shown with regard to books and libraries under the Ilkhānids (‘Mongols’).48 Explaining the presence of multiscriptural and multilingual fragments in the Schøyen collection (and thus in the reuse corpus and in the Qubba) deserves a slightly more nuanced discussion than seeking out traces of blood. In particular, one cannot assume per se that reuse is ‘hostile reuse.’ Just as acts of spoliation in building contexts can result from a variety of motivations (sourcing cheap material, aesthetic appreciation, appropriating a specific past, and so on),49 repurposing parchment and paper must also be discussed with ref- 46 47 48 49 ety: The Case of the Damascus Find,” in Negotiating Co-Existence: Communities, Cultures and Convivencia in Byzantine Society, ed. Barbara Crostini Lappin (Trier: wvt Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2013), 63–88. Hermann von Soden, “Bericht über die in der Kubbet in Damaskus gefundenen Handschriftenfragmente,” Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Classe Halbband ii (1903): 825–830, here 827. I thank Julian Yolles for drawing my attention to this passage, which he cites in his forthcoming book Making the East Latin. The Latin Culture of the Twelfth-Century Levant. Michal Biran, “Libraries, Books, and Transmission of Knowledge in Ilkhanid Baghdad,” Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 62 (2019): 464–502. Finbarr Barry Flood, “An Ambiguous Aesthetic: Crusader Spolia in Ayyubid Jerusalem,” in Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance 19 erence to the specific historical moment when it occurred.50 In the context of the Qubba, it is worth mentioning one fragment where the idea of blood and hostility does not work as an explanatory framework for its trajectory. Among the Latin items from the Qubba, we find a safe conduct that the Frankish king of Jerusalem Baldwin iii issued for a Muslim trader in the mid-sixth/twelfth century.51 The document names the trader as ‘Bohali filius Hebenecstin’ (probably Abū ʿAlī Ibn ʿIzz (al-)Dīn). The whole point of it was for Abū ʿAlī to carry it with him while conducting his business in the Kingdom of Jerusalem. It would be a somewhat unlikely series of events to assume that he returned this safe conduct to the Frankish monarch, who then put it into his library in the Holy Sepulchre, from where Saladin’s men plundered it to bring it to Damascus and finally deposit it in the Qubba. It is much more probable that Abū ʿAlī himself (or a descendant) deposited this document in the Qubba after it had lost relevance—in the same way that so many Arabic documents on marriage, divorce, and real-estate deals ended up there. Numerous Arabic-speaking individuals in the Middle East during the Frankish periods were familiar with Latin. Thus, the reuse fragments in the Schøyen collection were most likely, for many, not ‘the first Latin books ever seen.’ Rather, this period witnessed intensifying trade contacts and this arguably also led to an increased knowledge of Latin European politics and culture.52 Contacts between Arabic and Latin culture had already resulted, as Charles Burnett argued, in a high level of intellectual exchange in Antioch during the sixth/twelfth century.53 Some strands of Arabic historiography in this period started to demonstrate a much better knowledge not only of those Franks who had settled in the Levant, but also of Crusading campaigns, their leaders, and 50 51 52 53 Ayyubid Jerusalem. The Holy City in Context 1187–1250, ed. Robert Hillenbrand and Sylvia Auld (London: Altajir Trust, 2009), 202–215. Hirschler, “Books within Books”. Hans Eberhard Mayer, “Abū ʿAlīs Spuren am Berliner Tiergarten,” Archiv für Diplomatik 38 (1992): 113–133. For historical links between Latin and Arabic, see, for instance, Arianna D’Ottone Rambach and Dario Internullo, “Arabic in Latin Letters: The Case of the Papyrus British Library 3124,” in Palaeography between East and West. Proceedings of the Seminars on Arabic Palaeography at Sapienza University of Rome, ed. Arianna D’Ottone Rambach (Pisa: Fabrizio Serra Editore, 2018), 53–72 and Daniel König, ed., Latin and Arabic. Entangled Histories (Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2019). Charles Burnett, “Antioch as a Link between Arabic and Latin Culture in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” in Occident et Proche-Orient. Contacts scientifiques au temps des Croisades, ed. Isabelle Draelants, Anne Tihon and Baudouin van den Abeele (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 1–78 and Charles Burnett, “Stephen, the Disciple of Philosophy, and the Exchange of Medical Learning in Antioch,” Crusades 5 (2006): 113–129. Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 20 hirschler politics on the northern shore of the Mediterranean such as the papal policies.54 This led to an atmosphere where the Western ophthalmologist Benvenutus Grapheus de Iherusalem could enter the service of the ruler of Damascus. In his service, he most likely composed a work in Latin for the city’s physicians.55 That Oliver of Paderborn, a preacher and participant in the Fifth Crusade (1217– 1221), spoke of a delegation of Muslim ‘wise men’ who travelled to Jerusalem to examine gospel books might also indicate that Arabic-speaking scholars interacted with Latin texts in various ways.56 In addition to these examples from the world of intellectual encounters, Maria Georgopoulou has made a similar case for cultural crossover on the basis of Ayyubid glass objects from an arthistorical perspective.57 The Latin fragments in the Schøyen collection, the reuse corpus, and in the Qubba corpus certainly might have been robbed in the course of warfare, but this is not the most compelling argument for their presence in these corpora. Serena Ammirati, for instance, has suggested that those in the Qubba corpus had also been reused for making and preserving other books before entering this depository.58 That the fragments in the other languages—Greek, Syriac, Hebrew, Georgian, and Armenian—came to Damascus via Frankish libraries and in the context of warfare is entirely unlikely. Admittedly, we do not even have a plausible hypothesis as to why these fragments ended up in these Arabic and Muslim contexts. It is one of the enigmas of the Qubba why this building in the courtyard of the Umayyad Mosque served as a depository for such 54 55 56 57 58 On increasing connections between Arabic and Latin historiography cf. Mohamad El Merheb, “Louis ix in Medieval Arabic Sources: The Saint, the King, and the Sicilian Connection,” Al-Masāq. Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean 28/3 (2016): 282–301. For a case study of Ibn Wāṣil’s chronicle, see Konrad Hirschler, “Ibn Wāṣil: An Ayyubid Perspective on Frankish Lordships and Crusades,” in Muslim Historians of the Crusades, ed. Alexander Mallett (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 136–160. Jonathan Rubin and Cornelia Linde, “Western Medicine for the Masters of Damascus: Benvenutus Grapheus’s Experimenta,” Al-Masāq. Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean 26/2 (2014): 183–195. Oliver of Paderborn, Historia damiatina, ed. Hermann Hoogeweg, Die Schriften des Kölner Domscholasters, späteren Bischofs von Paderborn und Kardinal-Bischofs von S. Sabina, Oliverus (Tübingen: Litterarischer Verein in Stuttgart, 1894), 204 (cited in Julian Yolles, Making the East Latin). Maria Georgopoulou, “Orientalism and Crusader Art: Constructing a New Canon,” Medieval Encounters: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue 5:3 (1999): 289–321. Serena Ammirati, “Reconsidering the Latin Fragments from the Qubbat al-khazna in the Great Mosque of Damascus,” in The Damascus Fragments: Towards a History of the Qubbat al-khazna Corpus of Manuscripts and Documents, eds. Arianna D’Ottone Rambach, Konrad Hirschler and Ronny Vollandt (Beirut 2020): 321–329. Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance 21 items. Yet, it is evident that Damascus itself had such a rich mosaic of nonMuslim communities that the reason behind depositing these fragments in the Qubba has to be sought within the internal dynamics of this city or wider Bilād al-Shām, rather than exclusively looking towards Jerusalem and exclusively seeing them as booty of warfare. In the wider scheme of things, it is somewhat ironic that these fragments came in rather dubious circumstances to London in 1993. Yet, the sale catalogues elegantly direct the reader’s attention to a completely different point as a problematic translocation, namely, the year 1187. when the ‘Muslim conquerors’ took Jerusalem that was abandoned by ‘fleeing Christians’ and subject to ‘widespread looting.’59 They were thus ‘manuscripts carried off by the Saracens when the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem fell to Saladin in October 1187 and the sacristy of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was looted and destroyed.’60 Rather than engaging with the provenance elephant in the room—the 1993 appearance—we see here how another ostensible translocation—for which not even the flimsiest evidence exists—is pushed to the foreground (see in particular the section entitled ‘provenance’ in Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions’ catalogue, Annex 3). 6 The Schøyen Fragments and Their Post-reuse Trajectory The discussion so far has allowed us to trace the provenance of the Schøyen 1776 fragments to the Qubbat al-khazna as the earliest point from where they moved, in the seventh/thirteenth century, into the reuse corpus where they became spread all over Damascus. This section will identify a further firm anchor point in the subsequent trajectory of these parchments, namely, around the year 900/1500 in Damascus. This brings us back to the person of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, who plays a crucial role not only for the Schøyen 1776 corpus, but for the whole reuse corpus emanating from the Damascene post-classical ḥadīth booklets. Post-canonical ḥadīth scholarship went into steep decline in the course of the eighth/fourteenth century in Damascus, grinding to a halt in the ninth/fifteenth century. The production of new booklets virtually ceased and scholars hardly added any further notes of transmission on the existing booklets. Consequently, the booklets started to fall out of circulation and were of less and less social and cultural relevance. In response to this, a Damascene scholar of 59 60 Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions’ catalogue, 8 July 2020, auction no. 14328: lot no. 46. Sotheby’s catalogue, 6 December 1993, sale 93680: lot no. 3. Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 22 hirschler the late ninth/fifteenth-century, Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, systematically collected the booklets that he could still find in the city with the aim of preserving them. This turned out to be a massive project of safe-guarding ‘cultural heritage’ and building a ‘monument to medieval Syrian book culture’ that occupied him for many years and cannot be described in detail here.61 In the course of this project, he engaged intensively with these booklets and his hand appears on virtually all extant Damascene post-classical ḥadīth booklets. This also explains why we find his hand on three of the parchments in the Schøyen 1776 corpus (see table 2) and in all the extant booklets that they once enwrapped (see table 3). Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī not only collected Damascene ḥadīth booklets, but materially transformed them: He bound up to twenty of these booklets into numerous large-scale composite manuscripts with ‘proper’ bindings. Each of the composite manuscripts is thus a codicological unit in which he bound together formerly independent codicological units, our small booklets.62 Subsequently, Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī endowed his book collection and wrote a fihrist (catalogue) of all the titles it contained (see table 3 for the fihrist numbers of the booklets that our Schøyen fragments once enwrapped). For instance, he bound the stand-alone booklet that was once enwrapped in parchment Schøyen 1776/2 into a composite manuscript where its pages occupy folia 261 to 267 (no. 423e in his fihrist). In this composite manuscript, today Damascus, National al-Asad Library 3758, we find it together with seven other booklets that were all standalone booklets prior to Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī’s intervention. All items in the Damascene reuse corpus have to date been found in such composite manuscripts. In the process of producing his new composite manuscripts the old wrapper parchments became pointless, as the new heavy bindings now protected all the booklets in each such manuscript. Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī thus removed many of them. One such example is a booklet that became the sixth item in one of his composite manuscripts (no. 461e in his fihrist, today ms 3796/6 in the National al-Asad Library). This is a wrapper-free booklet and there is no sign that this post-canonical ḥadīth collection would have ever carried a protective parchment wrapper. The booklet contains the text of the tenth part of the 61 62 Hirschler, Monument. Johann Peter Gumbert, “Codicological Units: Towards a Terminology for the Stratigraphy of the Non-Homogeneous Codex,” in Il codice miscellaneo. Tipologie e funzioni, ed. Edoardo Crisci and Oronzo Pecere (Cassino: Univ. degli Studi, 2004), 17–42. For the terminological challenges to describe Middle English manuscripts with several works, see Julia Boffey and Anthony Stockwell Garfield Edwards, “Towards a Taxonomy of Middle English Manuscript Assemblages,” in Insular Books. Vernacular Manuscript Miscellanies in Late Medieval Britain, ed. Margaret Conolly and Raluca Radulescu (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 263–280. Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance 23 Fawāʾid al-Mukhalliṣ (referring to Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Mukhalliṣ, d. 393/1003).63 Yet, we find the parchment wrapper of this booklet in the binding of another of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī’s composite manuscripts (no. 566 in his fihrist, today ms Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Supplément Turc 983). What happened was that he removed the wrapper from the Fawāʾid alMukhalliṣ booklet as there was no longer any material need for it, and subsequently reused it as ‘waste parchment,’ gluing it onto the cover of one of his new composite manuscripts. Yet, in the case of the Schøyen 1776 fragments, he did not remove them from their booklets and most—or perhaps even all of them—went with their booklets into the new composite volumes. This is evident from traces of glue that most of these fragments carry at their ‘spine’ and that must be a remnant of the binding of the composite volumes.64 We have seen above that parchment Schøyen 1776/2 once enwrapped a booklet that Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī had bound into the composite manuscript that, today, is manuscript National al-Asad Library 3758. Fascinatingly, two other parchments from the Schøyen corpus, 1776/10 and 1776/12, once enwrapped booklets that Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī bound into the same composite manuscript. A similar case are parchments Schøyen 1776/7 and 1776/11, which enwrapped two booklets that Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī bound into the same composite manuscript (no. 404 in his fihrist, today ms National al-Asad Library 3757). It is unclear at what point the fragments were removed from the booklets and this might have happened at any point between the sixteenth century and the 1960s (the microfilm reproductions of the composite volumes in Damascus from the 1960s do not show them). It is thus unclear at what point they became what they are today: stand-alone bifolia with rather puzzling Arabic scribbles on them that do not make much sense without their recontextualization in the Damascene manuscript culture of the pre-Ottoman period. Some evidence suggests that they left these composite volumes and started yet another episode in their reuse trajectory: One user of parchment Schøyen 1776/2, for instance, cut a rectangular-shaped strip from the top of the folio. This must have happened after it had lost its function as a title-page/wrapper by the late ninth/fifteenth century, as this material intervention rendered several words of the title almost illegible. The question of when these fragments became stand-alone parchments is impossible to answer until a larger group of such parchments allow us to 63 64 Hirschler, Monument, entry 461e. Schøyen 1776/3, 1776/4, 1776/5, 1776/7, 1776/8, 1776/9, 1776/10, 1776/11 and 1776/12. Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 24 hirschler detect patterns. There are just two very faint traces that might be worth pursuing. Firstly, we know that, after his death, Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī’s book collection moved into the ʿUmarīya Madrasa in the Ṣāliḥīya Quarter of Damascus.65 They remained in this madrasa’s library until the late nineteenth century when they moved to the newly founded ‘modern’ Public Library, known as the Ẓāhirīya Library.66 The director of the Ẓāhirīya Library, Youssef Eche (Yūsuf al-ʿIshsh), wrote in 1943: ‘When the Ẓāhirīya Library was founded [i.e. the Public Library], scattered papers [awrāq] and quires [karārīs] came to the library in bundles. They were put away to be classified at a later point and we started to retrieve books from them.’67 Most of these papers and quires carried Arabic texts: We can identify manuscripts which librarians in the modern National alAsad Library, where the holdings of the Ẓāhirīya Library moved in the 1980s, ‘retrieved’ from the scattered papers and quires—de facto they built entirely new composite manuscripts.68 It is highly likely that users removed from such scattered papers and quires parchment fragments that might at that point have seemed like alien intruders. In addition, we find a case of non-Arabic fragments held in another institution in Damascus, the National Museum. It is known that this museum holds fragments in various scripts and languages other than Arabic: In 1967 the Dutch Biblical scholar P.A.H. De Boer published a brief report on his research in the National Museum. He was rather vague on what exactly he had seen and photographed.69 However, his private papers held in the Peshitta Institute Archives in Amsterdam provide more detail: In his travel log he writes: ‘In the museum [National Museum] I got a first impression of the material from the Qubba that is preserved there […]: a collection that has been lost for years; it includes Hebrew, Greek (nt), Georgian, Armenian and Arabic. Twenty fragments with Syriac text could be photographed. The whole collection, stored in cardboard boxes in a strong box in the museum’s basement without numbering or description, merits a comprehensive study.’70 In addition, in the late 1960s, Levon 65 66 67 68 69 70 On this madrasa see Muḥammad Muṭīʿ Al-Ḥāfiẓ, al-Madrasa al-ʿUmarīya bi-Dimashq wafaḍāʾil muʾassisihā Abī ʿUmar Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Maqdisī al-Ṣāliḥī wa-l-taʿrīf bi-usrat Āl Qudāma (Beirut: Dār al-fikr al-muʿāṣir, 2001). For details on this trajectory see Hirschler, Monument. Yūsuf al-ʿIshsh, “Mudhakkirāt yawmīya duwwinat bi-Dimashq,”Majallat al-majmaʿ al-ʿilmī (Damascus) 18/3–4 (1943): 142–154, here 142. Hirschler, Monument, 187. Pieter Arie Hendrik De Boer, “Dispersed Leaves,” Journal of Semitic Studies 13 (1968): 33– 35. Some information on the fragments is found in Pieter Arie Hendrik De Boer, “Peshiṭta Institute Communications vii,” Vetus Testamentum 18 (1968): 128–143. Amsterdam. Peshitta Institute Archives. Correspondence from staff members: Piet de Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance 25 Khatchikian and Artashes Mateossian identified fourteen Armenian fragments that originated from the Qubbat al-khazna.71 Yet, the catalogues of the National Museum have never mentioned any such items and it is likely that other institutions also never catalogued similar material. The second vague trace for the post-1500 trajectory of the stand-alone parchments with Arabic titles is the presence of such parchments from the reuse corpus in private ownership in Damascus in the early twentieth century. Bruno Violet was the main German scholar working on the holdings in the Qubbat al-khazna in 1900 and 1901. He was aware that the Qubba was not the only place in Damascus to look for parchments with non-Arabic texts. His search for such material brought him into close contact with local scholars and collectors. One of them was a certain ‘Mr. Ḥajāz’, who was an employee of the Banque Ottomane. This Ḥajāz (we do not know yet who he was) loaned nonArabic fragments from his private collection to Violet and Violet describes them as ‘having served as protections of Arabic manuscripts.’72 We are fortunate to have a photo of one of these fragments (illustration 17), even if it was later folded and holepunched in Berlin. Here, we see the same features that we have seen for our Schøyen fragments: The word ‘waqf ’ (endowment) is written on the title page and it carries an Arabic title, ‘First [part] of the Teachings of Jaʿfar al-Thaqafī’, which is once again a title referring to a post-canonical ḥadīth booklet.73 Although these traces remain vague, they clearly show that early twentieth-century Damascene collectors had access to and possession of similar parchments as those in the Schøyen corpus. As we have firm Damascene anchor points for such fragments in the thirteenth century (booklets), the fifteenth century (Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī), and the early twentieth century, it is most likely that they continuously stayed in Damascus during this period. 71 72 73 Boer, Travel log P.A.H. de Boer]. 1967. I thank Wido van Peursen and Geert Jan Veldman for sending me transcripts of the Dutch original. Levon Khachikyan/Artashes Matevosyan, “The Armenian Fragments of the National Museum in Damascus,” in The Damascus Fragments: Towards a History of the Qubbat alkhazna Corpus of Manuscripts and Documents, ed. Arianna D’Ottone Rambach, Konrad Hirschler and Ronny Vollandt (Beirut 2020): 363–407 [originally published in Armenian in Haigazian. Armenological Review 3 (1972): 9–54]. I thank Alin Suciu for drawing my attention to this article. Letter from Violet to Harnack, 14.06.1900, archive of the Berlin-Brandenburgische Akademie der Wissenschaften. My thanks go to Arnd Rattmann for providing me with this reference. My thanks go to Arnd Rattmann for providing me with this reference and the photo. Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 26 7 hirschler Conclusion We started this article with the fanciful and absurd provenance ascribed to the Schøyen 1776 parchments in recent decades. The marginal and material evidence presented here has provided these parchments with a much firmer provenance within Middle Eastern societies and free of imagined links with tales of Thousand and One Nights as well as hypothetical raids on medieval libraries. Geographically, these items were most likely produced in the wider Bilād al-Shām or were at least part of the collections of Christian owners in this area at an early point. They (most likely) moved subsequently to the Qubbat alkhazna in Damascus and the city’s manuscript producers (without doubt) then reused them as protective wrappers/title pages for the production or restoration of post-canonical ḥadīth booklets in the seventh/thirteenth century. They later circulated as part of these booklets in the city’s urban literary topography: madrasas; private homes; mosques; gardens; libraries; and markets. In the aftermath of the steep decline of post-canonical ḥadīth scholarship from the eighth/fourteenth century onwards, they re-emerge once again in the monumentalization project of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, around the year 900/1500. Subsequently, their trajectory is unclear, but they most likely stayed in Damascus in the following centuries and this makes the ‘private owner, Damascus’ in 1993 not entirely unlikely. The few vague traces of other such items being held in Damascus supports this conclusion. However, in the absence of more comparative material, it is impossible to say at what point these twelve fragments started to form the current corpus. Most likely this happened at some point after the late nineteenth century and it could have even happened as late as the 1980s or 1990s, when the anonymous Damascene owner might have gathered material to sell to Sotheby’s. The main argument of this article, however, is that framing our study of manuscripts in terms of provenance is crucial for reinstating their history. While considerable stretches of this trajectory are still unclear, especially between the late ninth/fifteenth century and 1993, this article has suggested ways to think about these fragments as material objects to which social actors ascribed a range of different meanings and which they put to a range of different uses. The inclusion of the marginal, Arabic notes, and the material, folding lines and sewing holes, has contributed to reconstituting a biography for the longest stretch of these objects’ trajectory. The focus on traces of provenance has illuminated various contexts through which they passed in the course of their life cycles. Rather than a random collection of parchments with a provenance and histories created for commercial purposes, the Schøyen 1776 parchments can now be seen as part of a coherent and culturally significant corpus, Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance 27 the reuse corpus. Since they emerged on the market, this rich history was sidelined and silenced by fanciful imaginations of exotic Oriental tales and flimsy stories linked to the Crusades and Jerusalem. What we have here is rather a fascinating window into Damascene manuscript cultures to which these fragments belonged at least since the seventh/thirteenth century. Acknowledgments This paper is the result of a long-standing interest in these fragments and the question of provenance in general. I have to thank numerous individuals who have helped me in framing this article. In addition to those named in specific places below, I would like to thank, in particular, Olly Akkerman, Chiara De Nicolais, Farid El-Ghawaby, Boris Liebrenz, Nicholas McBurney, and Torsten Wollina. I thank Vartan Matiossian for identifying the Armenian texts. Works Cited Said Aljoumani and Konrad Hirschler, Muʾallafāt Yūsuf b. Ḥasan Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī wamusāhamatuhu fī ḥifẓ al-turāth al-fikrī (Leiden: Brill, 2021). Serena Ammirati, “Reconsidering the Latin Fragments from the Qubbat al-khazna in the Great Mosque of Damascus,” in The Damascus Fragments: Towards a History of the Qubbat al-khazna Corpus of Manuscripts and Documents, eds. Arianna D’Ottone Rambach, Konrad Hirschler and Ronny Vollandt (Beirut 2020): 321–329. Eva Blimlinger and Heinz Schödl, ed., Die Praxis des Sammelns. Personen und Institutionen im Fokus der Provenienzforschung (Wien: Böhlau, 2014). Julia Boffey and Anthony Stockwell Garfield Edwards, “Towards a Taxonomy of Middle English Manuscript Assemblages,” in Insular Books. Vernacular Manuscript Miscellanies in Late Medieval Britain, ed. Margaret Conolly and Raluca Radulescu (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015), 263–280. Jonathan A.C. Brown, The Canonization of al-Bukhārī and Muslim: The Formation and Function of the Sunnī Ḥadīth Canon (Leiden: Brill, 2007). Charles Burnett, “Antioch as a Link between Arabic and Latin Culture in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries,” in Occident et Proche-Orient. Contacts scientifiques au temps des Croisades, ed. Isabelle Draelants, Anne Tihon and Baudouin van den Abeele (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 1–78. Charles Burnett, “Stephen, the Disciple of Philosophy, and the Exchange of Medical Learning in Antioch,” Crusades 5 (2006): 113–129. Francesco D’Aiuto, “Un antico inno per la Resurrezione (con nuove testimonianze di Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 28 hirschler ’scrittura mista’ d’area orientale),” Rivista di studi bizantini e neoellenici 45 (2008): 3–136. Garrett Davidson, Carrying on the Tradition: A Social and Intellectual History of Hadith Transmission Across a Millennium (Leiden: Brill 2020). Pieter Arie Hendrik De Boer, “Dispersed Leaves,” Journal of Semitic Studies 13 (1968): 33–35. Pieter Arie Hendrik De Boer, “Peshiṭta Institute Communications vii,” Vetus Testamentum 18 (1968): 128–143. Arianna D’Ottone, “Manuscripts as Mirrors of a Multilingual and Multicultural Society: The Case of the Damascus Find,” in Negotiating Co-Existence: Communities, Cultures and Convivencia in Byzantine Society, ed. Barbara Crostini Lappin (Trier: wvt Wissenschaftlicher Verlag, 2013), 63–88. Arianna D’Ottone Rambach and Dario Internullo, “Arabic in Latin Letters: The Case of the Papyrus British Library 3124,” in Palaeography between East and West. Proceedings of the Seminars on Arabic Palaeography at Sapienza University of Rome, ed. Arianna D’Ottone Rambach (Pisa: Fabrizio Serra Editore, 2018), 53–72. Arianna D’Ottone Rambach, Konrad Hirschler and Ronny Vollandt, ed., The Damascus Fragments: Towards a History of the Qubbat al-khazna Corpus of Manuscripts and Documents (Beirut 2020). Mohamad El Merheb, “Louis ix in Medieval Arabic Sources: The Saint, the King, and the Sicilian Connection,” Al-Masāq. Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean 28/3 (2016): 282–301. Finbarr Barry Flood, “An Ambiguous Aesthetic: Crusader Spolia in Ayyubid Jerusalem,” in Ayyubid Jerusalem. The Holy City in Context 1187–1250, ed. Robert Hillenbrand and Sylvia Auld (London: Altajir Trust, 2009), 202–215. Adam Gacek, Arabic Manuscripts. A Vademecum for Readers (Leiden: Brill, 2009). Maria Georgopoulou, “Orientalism and Crusader Art: Constructing a New Canon,” Medieval Encounters: Jewish, Christian and Muslim Culture in Confluence and Dialogue 5:3 (1999): 289–321. Johann Peter Gumbert, “Codicological Units: Towards a Terminology for the Stratigraphy of the Non-Homogeneous Codex,” in Il codice miscellaneo. Tipologie e funzioni, ed. Edoardo Crisci and Oronzo Pecere (Cassino: Univ. degli Studi, 2004), 17–42. Muḥammad Muṭīʿ al-Ḥāfiẓ, al-Madrasa al-ʿUmarīya bi-Dimashq wa-faḍāʾil muʾassisihā Abī ʿUmar Muḥammad b. Aḥmad al-Maqdisī al-Ṣāliḥī wa-l-taʿrīf bi-usrat Āl Qudāma (Beirut: Dār al-fikr al-muʿāṣir, 2001). Konrad Hirschler, “Ibn Wāṣil: An Ayyubid Perspective on Frankish Lordships and Crusades,” in Muslim Historians of the Crusades, ed. Alexander Mallett (Leiden: Brill, 2014), 136–160. Konrad Hirschler, A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture. The Library of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019). Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance 29 Konrad Hirschler, “The Materiality of ḥadīth Scholarship in the Post-Canonical Period,” in Beyond Authenticity.Towards Alternative Approaches to Ḥadīth Narrations and Collections, ed. Mohammad Gharaibeh (Leiden: Brill 2021, forthcoming). Konrad Hirschler, “Books within Books: The Link between Damascene Reuse Fragments and the Qubbat al-Khazna,” in The Damascus Fragments: Towards a History of the Qubbat al-khazna Corpus of Manuscripts and Documents, ed. Arianna D’Ottone Rambach, Konrad Hirschler and Ronny Vollandt (Beirut 2020): 439–473. Yūsuf Al-ʿIshsh, “Mudhakkirāt yawmīya duwwinat bi-Dimashq,” Majallat al-majmaʿ alʿilmī (Damascus) 18/3–4 (1943): 142–154. Levon Khachikyan and Artashes Matevosyan, “The Armenian Fragments of the National Museum in Damascus,” in The Damascus Fragments: Towards a History of the Qubbat al-khazna Corpus of Manuscripts and Documents, ed. Arianna D’Ottone Rambach, Konrad Hirschler and Ronny Vollandt (Beirut 2020): 363–407. [originally in Armenian: Լ. [Լեւոն] Խաչիկեան եւ Ա. [Արտաշես] Մաթեւոսյան, «Դամասկոսի թանգարանի հայկական պատառիկները», Հայկազեան Հայագիտական Հանդես, Հատոր Գ, Պէյրութ, (1972), 9–54.] Daniel König, ed., Latin and Arabic. Entangled Histories (Heidelberg: Heidelberg University Publishing, 2019). Igor Kopytoff, “The Cultural Biography of Things: Commoditization as Process,” in The Social Life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective, ed. Arjun Appadurai (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 64–91. Boris Liebrenz, Die Rifāʿīya aus Damaskus: Eine Privatbibliothek im osmanischen Syrien und ihr kulturelles Umfeld (Leiden: Brill, 2016). Hans Eberhard Mayer, “Abū ʿAlīs Spuren am Berliner Tiergarten,” Archiv für Diplomatik 38 (1992): 113–133. Oliver of Paderborn, Historia damiatina, ed. Hermann Hoogeweg, Die Schriften des Kölner Domscholasters, späteren Bischofs von Paderborn und Kardinal-Bischofs von S. Sabina, Oliverus (Tübingen: Litterarischer Verein in Stuttgart, 1894). Jonathan Rubin and Cornelia Linde, “Western Medicine for the Masters of Damascus: Benvenutus Grapheus’s Experimenta,” Al-Masaq. Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean 26/2 (2014): 183–195. Yāsīn al-Sawwās, Fihris majāmīʿ al-Madrasa al-ʿUmarīya fī Dār al-Kutub al-Ẓāhirīya bi-Dimashq (Kuwait: Jāmiʿat al-Duwal al-ʿArabīya/Maʿhad al-Makhṭūṭāt al-ʿArabīya, 1987). Hermann von Soden, “Bericht über die in der Kubbet in Damaskus gefundenen Handschriftenfragmente,” Sitzungsberichte der Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften. Philosophisch-historische Classe Halbband ii (1903): 825–830. Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 30 A.1 hirschler Annex 1—Edition and Selected Translation of Arabic Notes on the Schøyen 1776 Fragments Abbreviations: Ti title Co note on content En endowment note with name of endower if given Par note on part(s) Tr note on transmission of text on ownership Na personal name without further information as to why the name is on the fragment Poe poetry iah Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī Schøyen 1776/1 1 Poe poetry in hand of iah He cures the heart’s greatest affliction profuse and enduring sorrow born of fears He dispels my escalating affliction sufficient for us is God, the best disposer of affairs He granted fate to all affliction our lament and wail are of no benefit He will dispel sorrow and greatest affliction sufficient for us is God, the best disposer of affairs ‫قد حل في القلب من عظم البلا هّم ٌ من خوف زايد مستطيل‬ ‫حسبنا الله ونعم الوكيل‬ ‫لا ينفع النوح منا والعو يل‬ 2 Poe ‫حسبنا الله ونعم الوكيل‬ poetry exercise (?) in hand of iah ‫إذا اشتد بي عظم البلا ف َر ّجه‬ ‫قد سمح الدهر بكل البلا‬ ‫بل يفرج الهم وعظم البلا‬ ‫يفُ ر ّج الهّم وعظم البلا‬ ‫ل من الش ّر طو يل‬ ّ ‫ما قد ح‬ Schøyen 1776/2 1 Ti 127th [part] on vilifying the hypocrite, dictation by Ibn ʿAsākir ‫السابع والعشرون بعد ]الماية في ذم ذي[ الوجهين إملاء الحافظ ابن عساكر‬ Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance 31 Schøyen 1776/3 1 Ti Ten Teaching Sessions, dictation by al-Ḥurfī 2 En ‫عشرة مجالس من أمالي الحرفي‬ referring to: ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. ʿUbayd Allāh al-Ḥurfī (d. 423/1031– 1032) Waqf Ibn al-Muḥibb ‫وقف‬ 3 Na ʿAbd al-Raḥmān b. al-Ḥāfiẓ al-Dhahabī 4 Na Nāṣir b. Muḥammad ʿIzz al-Dīn 5 Na … al-Bālisī 6 Tr from him transmitted Shihāb al-Dīn (?) There are further illegible notes. ‫ابن المحب بتضمينه‬ ‫عبد الرحمن ابن الحافظ الذهبي‬ ‫ناصر بن محمد عز الدين‬ ‫… البالسي‬ ‫نقل منه ]شهاب[ الدين‬ Schøyen 1776/4 1 Ti 1st and 2nd [part] of the reading to al-Wazīr on the authority of alBaghawī ‫الأول والثاني من القراءة على الوز ير عن البغوي‬ referring to: ʿĪsā b. ʿAlī Ibn al-Jarrāḥ al-Wazīr (d. 391/1001) and ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad al-Baghawī 2 Co in its beginning is the ḥadīth al-ibhām, al-unmula and al-khinṣir (iah’s hand) ‫في أوله حديث الإ بهام والأنملة والخنصر‬ 3 Co and in it is the ḥadīth “when man reaches [the age of ] 40” (iah’s hand) ‫وفيه حديث إذا بلغ بن آدم الأر بعين‬ 4 Par the first part (iah’s hand) ‫الجزء الأول‬ 5 Na Ibn al-Taqī Aḥmad ‫ابن التقي أحمد‬ Schøyen 1776/5 1 Ti 5th part of the Ḥinnāʾīyāt ‫الجزء الخامس من الحنائيات‬ referring to: al-Ḥusayn b. Muḥammad al-Ḥinnāʾī al-Dimashqī (d. 459/ 1066–1067) Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 32 2 Co 3 Tr 4 En hirschler in it is Istighfār [al-ṣaḥfa] (iah’s hand) [‫فيه استغفار ]الصحفة؟‬ referring to the Prophetic ḥadīth Some of it is among [the ḥadīths] for which I received the licence to transmit ‫بعضه سماعي‬ ‫وقف‬ Schøyen 1776/6 1 Ti The Book of 40 [ḥadīth] selected … ‫كتاب الأر بعين المخرجة‬ Schøyen 1776/7 recto 1 Ti The 1st [part] of the book Relief after Hardship [‫الأول من كتاب الفرج بعد ]الشدة‬ referring to the book al-Faraj baʿda al-shidda by ʿAbd Allāh b. Muḥammad Ibn Abī al-Dunyā (d. 281/894) 2 En ‫وقف‬ 3 Na Ibn al-Muḥibb, Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbd al-Hādī, Muḥammad b. Muḥammad b. …, ʿAbd Allāh b. …, Muḥammad b. Rājiḥ, Khalīl al-Ḥāfiẓī in the first part ‫ابن المحب‬ ‫إ برهيم بن عبد الهادي‬ … ‫محمد بن محمد بن‬ (‫عبد الله بن )مجلي؟‬ ‫محمد بن راجح‬ ‫خليل الحافظي‬ ‫في الجز الاول‬ verso 4 Tr Muḥammad al-Qāriʾ, Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, Sulaymān [b.] Muḥammad b. Ibrāhīm b. Mujallī, Shaykh Abū Bakr b. Aḥmad b. Hawas, Shaykh Aḥmad alQayyim, Dāwūd and Salmān sons of Muḥammad b. ʿAbd Allāh b. Maḥmūd, Muḥammad b. al-Nūr al-Ḥanbalī, Sulaymān b. al-Khaṭīb, Aḥmad b. Mujallī, Fayyāḍ, Muḥammad b. Aḥmad b. ʿUmar …, Muḥammad b. Uthmān b. ʿĪsā al-Baytalīdī, their writer [i.e. the writer of this note], the first Shaykh [named in this note] did not attend continuously, … al-Qāḍī, Mūsā b. Fayyāḍ attended from the biography of al-Kirmānī onwards Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance 33 ‫ والشيخ أبو بكر بن‬،‫ وسليمان ]بن[ محمد بن إ برهيم بن مجلي‬،‫ وابن عبد الهادي‬،‫محمد القارئ‬ ‫ ومحمد‬،‫ وداود وسلمان ابنا محمد بن عبد الله بن محمود‬،‫ والشيخ احمد القيم‬،‫أحمد بن هوس‬ ‫ ومحمد بن أحمد بن عمر‬،‫ وفياض‬،‫ وأحمد بن مجلي‬،‫ وسليمان بن الخطيب‬،‫بن النور الـحنبلي‬ ‫ ومحمد بن عثمان بن عيسى البيتليدي وكاتبهم‬،[…] ‫بفوت الشيخ الأول‬ ‫]ر بيب؟[ القاضي‬ ‫وحضر موسى بن فياص‬ ‫من ترجمة الـكرماني‬ Schøyen 1776/8 1 Ti Three teaching sessions of the dictations of al-Wazīr ʿĪsā b. ʿAlī 7th, 8th and 9th [session] of the 2nd part ‫فيه ثلاث مجالس من أمالي الوز ير عيسى بن علي السابع والثامن والتاسع من الجزء الثاني‬ referring to: ʿĪsā b. ʿAlī Ibn al-Jarrāḥ al-Wazīr (d. 391/1001) 2 En ‫وقف‬ 3 Tr licence to transmit for Abū al-Majd on the authority of al-Faraj/al-Sarrāj (‫سماع ابي المجد على الفرج )السراج؟‬ Schøyen 1776/9 1 Ti First part of the Mahrawānīyāt ‫الجزء الأول من المهروانيات‬ 2 Tr reading of [ʿAbd] al-Raḥīm to his children ‫قراءة الرحيم لأولاده‬ 3 on ownership of [Zayn al-Dīn Qāsim] al-Raḥbī74 (may God preserve him and forgive him) … ‫ملك ]ز ين الدين قاسم[ الرحبي حفظه الله وغفر له وسامحه‬ Schøyen 1776/10 1 Ti Selection from the 9th part of the ḥadīths of al-Mukhalliṣ ‫منتقى من الجزء التاسع من حديث المخلص‬ referring to: Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Raḥmān al-Mukhalliṣ (d. 393/1003) 2 En ‫وقف‬ 74 For the full name of this owner, see the original booklet to which this fragment once belonged: ms Damascus, National al-Asad Library 3783/16 where al-Raḥbī identifies himself as the copyist of ijāzāt (e.g. fol. 120a) and participates himself in a reading session (fol. 134a, line 7). Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 34 3 Na hirschler Ismāʿīl b. Jahbal, …, ʿAbd al-Raḥmān, … Ḥāzim, …, ʿUmar b. ʿAbd Allāh, two sons of Ṭarkhān, Ibn … [‫إسمعيل بن ]جهبل‬ .… ‫ ابن‬،‫ ابنا طرخان‬،‫ عمر بن عبد الله‬،… ،‫ … حازم‬،‫ عبد الرحمن‬,… There is also a numbered list of hijrī months on this fragment. The function of this list is unclear to me: 3 ‫ جمادى الآخرة‬3 ،2 ‫ جمادى الأولى‬1 ،7 ‫ ر بيع الآخر‬7 ‫ رمضان‬7 ،6 ‫ شعبان‬6 ،5 ‫ رجب‬4 Schøyen 1776/11 1 Ti 12th [part] of the ḥadīths and reports by Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn ‫الثاني عشر من الأحاديث والحكايات لضياء الدين‬ referring to: Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Maqdisī (d. 643/1245) 2 En ‫وقف‬ 3 Co at its end is the dream of ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz ‫في آخره منام عمر بن عبد العز يز‬ There is a further note ‘ṭālaʿahu’ (he read it). Schøyen 1776/12 1 Ti 7th [part] of the selected ḥadīths compiled by Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Maqdisī ‫السابع من الأحاديث المختارة جمع الحافظ أبي عبد الله محمد بن عبد الواحد المقدسي‬ referring to: Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn Muḥammad b. ʿAbd al-Wāḥid al-Maqdisī (d. 643/1245) A.2 Annex 2—Sotheby’s Catalogue, 6 December 1993, Sale 93680: Lot No. 3, pp. 9/10 Fragments of Liturgical and Biblical Manuscripts in Latin, Armenian and Greek with Additions in Arabic, on vellum (France or England, Italy, or the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, twelfth century) [The description of the individual pieces in the catalogue (14 lines) is reproduced in D’Aiuto, “Un antico inno per la Resurrezione,” 29/30.] These represent an astonishing single clutch of fragments of twelfth-century manuscripts, which are believed to have survived in Damascus. They were demonstrably already in the Middle East by the late twelfth or thirteenth century, for they were used as flyleaves or wrappers in a series of fasicules of the Tales of the Arabian Nights, and of other texts, of which the titles are are [sic] written sideways across each piece in handsome Arabic unvocalised naskhi Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance 35 hands of not later than the thirteenth century, together with later Arabic names including an apparent reference to the Damascus historian Ali ibn Asakir (d. 1176). The conjuction of Latin liturgical books from France and Italy—none later than the third quarter of the twelfth century—with fragments of Armenian and Greek liturgy of the same date, all certainly in the hands of the Arabs by 1200 or so, can suggest only one source: these are relics from the manuscripts carried off by the Saracens when the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem fell to Saladin in October 1187 and the sacristy of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was looted and destroyed. It is impossible to over-estimate the importance of the Crusades in the history of medieval Europe. “No other movement in the history of the middle Ages has made such a strong appeal to posterity; no other cause has seemed inspired by so much valour and religious fervour. To contemporaries, the liberation of the Holy places from the yoke of the infidel had been God’s own work; and the long series of calamities that followed were due to unaccountable evil forces. The unexpected success of the First Crusade appeared little short of miraculous … and the eventual collapse of the Kingdom at the hands of the savage Mameluks of Egypt stirred the imagination of the Latin world for many generations to come’” (H. Buchtal [sic!], Miniature Painting in the Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem, 1957, p. xxvii). Antioch fell to the Franks in 1098 and Jerusalem itself in July 1099. Geoffrey of Bouillon assumed the title of ‘advocate of the Holy Sepulchre’ and on Christmas Day in 1100, his brother Baldwin, count of Edessa, was crowned king of Jerusalem. There were Frankish forces in Antioch, Edessa and Tripoli but by about 1131 Jerusalem stood supreme as the Christian capital on the very edge of the world. The kingdom was principally French and Genoese, though the wife of Baldwin ii was Armenian. The Church of the Holy Sepulchre was its cathedral, reconsecrated in 1149, and from 1114 it had followed the western Latin liturgy, according to the rule of St. Augustine. The pieces here are typical church manuscripts of the time: the Bible, homilies, and canon Law. One is certainly French and one is in that Norman hand which can be French or English. Such books were trundled across Europe and by sea from Venice to Jaffa. [p. 10] The other Latin pieces are in Italianate hands and were made in Italy or in Latin Kingdom itself. The script of the Homiliary fragment in particular is extremely close to that of the Psalter of Queen Melisende (B.L., Egerton ms.1139), written in Jerusalem by a European scribe probably in 1131–1143. “The Holy Sepulchre must have been the leading scriptorium during this period and, though this cannot be affirmed beyond doubt, it may well have been the only one … This did not of course exclude other and more modest lines of production in the scriptorium of the Holy Sepulchre … destined for use Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 36 hirschler in the adjacent church, on the lines of a typical western monastic or cathedral scriptorium. No doubt this was its principal and most important function; the shere number of the service books constantly needed for the cathedral church of Jerusalem must have great exceeded that of the splendid specimens of the calligrapher’s and illuminator’s work commissioned by the royal family” (Buchtal, op. cit., pp. xxx and 37). Of twelfth-century crusader books, only six manuscripts have hitherto been identified: B.L., Egerton ms.1139, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum McClean ms.49 (a fragment only), B.N. mss.lat. 9396 and 12056, and Vatican cod.Vat.lat. 5974. All are luxury books and were doubtless rescued to the west in the face of the advancing armies of the Mameluks. Jerusalem fell to Saladin on 2nd October 1187, and its libraries were destroyed. The pieces here more-or-less double our knowledge of crusader manuscripts, and were perhaps the first Latin books ever seen by the Saracens who, instead of destroying them all, kept some for their vellum, a rare commodity, and cut them up for that most quintessential of Middle Eastern romances, the tales of the Arabian nights. A.3 Annex 3—Dreweatts & Bloomsbury Auctions’ Catalogue, 8 July 2020, Auction No. 14328: Lot No. 46, pp. 76 & 78. Kitab Alif Laila, the Book of One Thousand and One Nights, in Arabic, short quotations added to twelve cuttings recovered from Christian manuscripts, including various Bibles in Latin and a leaf from a copy of the Decretals, a Menaion and Oktoechos or Parakletike in Greek, an orthodox prayerbook and a Bible in Armenian, and a few originally blank pieces of parchment most probably from similar Christian books, manuscripts on parchment [France, Italy, perhaps England, Armenia, and Byzantium, ninth to twelfth century, with additions from the Holy Land in the late twelfth or early thirteenth century] Thirteen cuttings: (a) Matthew 11:16–19 and 12:5–25, in Latin, double column of 13 lines in a Romanesque book script, red and blue initials, northern France, midtwelfth century, with addition of 6 lines in Arabic naskh (Thousand and One Nights); (b) Canon Law, Decretals, similar to but not identifiable as Ivo of Chartres, in Latin, single column of 13 lines in a good Romanesque bookhand, annotations in margins, headings in capitals (some touched in red), six 2-line initials, Normandy or England, first half of the twelfth century, with addition of 2 lines in Arabic naskh (“The 27th … the two faces … the guardian”); (c) Malachi 1:4–10; 1:14– 2:20, in Latin, single column of 32 lines in a rounded bookhand, Italy, first half of the twelfth century, with addition of 6 lines in Arabic naskh (“The tenth sitting of Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance 37 the literal …”); (d) Homiliary, including part of St. Gregory: Homiliae in Evangelia, Lib. ii, Hom. 31, and reading from Matthew 9:9, single column of 16 lines in good Romanesque bookhand, perhaps Italy or Latin Kingdom or Jerusalem, second half of the twelfth century, with addition of 5 lines in Arabic naskh (the first and second reading according to the Wazir from the Baghari); (e) Zamagirk, part of the Armenian Orthodox Prayerbook, with readings from John and Matthew, double column of 10 lines in a sloping Armenian Uncial (erkat’agir), Armenia, twelfth century, with addition of 4 lines in Arabic naskh (“The fifth part of the twistings/turnings[?]”); ( f ) two fragments of Psalms, with the Name ‘Elijah’ in Armenian, double column of 16 lines in an Armenian Uncial (erkat’agir), Armenia, twelfth century, with additions of 2 lines of Arabic naskh ( from the Book of the 40 Extracts, and Book of Manliness/Chivalry) on a paper label pasted on; (g) Menaion, part of the Office of the Apostle Bartholomew, for August 25, in Greek, double column of 30 lines in Greek minuscule, Byzantium, tenth century, with addition of 15 lines of Arabic naskh in upper and side borders (part of Thousand and One Nights and a charitable donation); (h) Oktoechos or Parakletike, liturgical book of the Byzantine Church, single column of 22 lines in a sloping Greek half uncial (the socalled ‘mixed script’), Byzantium, ninth century, with addition of 3 lines of Arabic naskh (Thousand and One Nights); plus four further cuttings from blank sections of parchment (but most probably also from Christian books), with (1) 4 lines of Arabic naskh (“The first part of the skilled-one and … given to his children”), (2) 7 lines of Arabic naskh (section of the ninth part of the Service of Poetry, with a charitable donation), (3) 3 lines of Arabic naskh (Thousand and One Nights), (4) 2 lines of Arabic naskh (Thousand and One Nights); almost all approximately 150 by 170mm., some with tears and losses to edges, only one with substantial losses to edges (item a) this clutch of fragments is of breathtaking importance as witnesses to the fall of jerusalem; and they are most probably all that remains of a series of codices left abandoned in the city of fleeing christians when it fell to the forces of salah ad-din in 1187, and then reused by the muslim conquerors as wrappers for their own books Provenance: 1. Almost certainly from a library in the Holy City of Jerusalem, probably that of the Holy Sepulchre itself, the epicentre of Christendom and Christian devotion. The Crusades and the fall of Jerusalem were of the greatest importance to the history of the Middle Ages and the mind of medieval man. The call to arms to take back the Holy City gripped the populaJournal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 38 2. hirschler tion of medieval Europe and drew many thousands of them to strange lands beyond the boundaries of Europe. In addition, the eventual fall of that city to the Muslim invader in 1187 was a crippling low point that inspired political and religious upheaval throughout Europe. Originally, these leaves were part of a range of Christian liturgical and legal books from Western Europe, Byzantium, and Armenia, dating from the ninth to the mid-twelfth century. Then, they were cut up and reused as wrappers on a lengthy Arabic manuscript of One Thousand and One Nights, writing sideways along their blank spaces in handsome unvocalised naskh of not later than the thirteenth century, along with later Arabic names including an apparent reference to the Damascus historian Ali ibn Asakir (d. 1176). No other site apart from the Crusader kingdom of Jerusalem, and probably the Church of the Holy Sepulchre itself, could allow for this mix of scripts. It is of importance that the earliest fragments here are Greek (identified and published by Aiuto in 2006 and 2008). The arrival of the Western Crusaders in 1099 pushed out the Greek liturgy from the Holy Land in favour of a Latin liturgy based on the Rule of St. Augustine. However, Greek observance did continue in the Kingdom of Jerusalem (see D. Galadza, ‘Greek liturgy in crusader Jerusalem: witnesses of liturgical life of the Holy Sepulchre and St Sabas Lavra’, Journal of Medieval History, 43, 2017). Under Western rule, Jerusalem was the cosmopolitan Christian capital of the East, principally French and Genoese, although the wife of Baldwin ii, its ruler, was Armenian. It fell to the forces of Salah adDin in October 1187, when the last French nobleman in the city, Balian of Ibelin, negotiated a surrender and peaceful passage to the sea for its occupants. Immediately after the surrender of the city, amid widespread looting, Salah ad-Din ordered the closing of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, ultimately deciding not to destroy it, but handing it back to the Greek authorities. Other surviving books from Jerusalem, or fragments of them, testify to the carrying of valuable codices from the city by refugees (see British Library, Egerton ms 1139; Cambridge, Fritzwilliam, McClean ms 49; BnF, mss. Lat. 9396 and 12056; and Vatican, cod. Vat.Lat.5974), but it should be noted that those were grand and opulent books. What we have here are more probably the last relics of the mundane books of the religious services of the city, abandoned by fleeing Christians, and picked up by some part of the Muslim conquerors and reused for their valuable parchment. These entering Arabic hands in the late twelfth century, perhaps passing then to a member of Salah ad-Din’s Syrian forces, where they were reused as wrappers around a copy of Kitab Alif Laila, the book of One Thousand Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance 3. 4. 39 and One nights. When sold last in 1993, these cuttings were reported as thought to have survived in Damascus, and this accords with the fact that in 1187 Salah ad-Din’s forces were equally composed of Egyptians and Syrians, as well as the reading of the name Ali ibn Asakir among the additions. Sotheby’s, 6 December 1993, lot 3. Schøyen Collection, London and Oslo, their ms 1776, acquired in the Sotheby’s sale. Text and script: It is an astounding thought that these handful of leaves were almost certainly in Jerusalem when the city fell to the Muslim invaders in 1187, and were left behind by the panicked inhabitants as they fled the city with only what they could carry. As if that were not enough, they were then repurposed by their new owners as wrappers for short stories from and are among the earliest witnesses to that text. Quite simply nothing like these leaves has ever been recorded anywhere else, and it is nearly inconceivable that an archive like this will ever again appear on the market. In apparent reflection of the predominantly French and Genoese population of Jerusalem under the Crusaders, the majority of Western scripts here are French and Italian, with a single example that could be Norman or just possibly English. The parent volumes were most probably carried by individual members of the clergy to Jerusalem. However, it remains tantalisingly possible that some of these were written by Western scribes in the Holy City itself. These fragments are also of some importance for Greek and Arabic palaeography and text studies. As D’Aiuto demonstrates, item (h) here, containing ninth-century Greek Oktoechos or Parakletike is amongst the oldest witnesses to this text, with a main text in the form of an acrostic hymn—a type otherwise known from ancient Georgian translations of Greek hymns of the Office, and most probably bearing witness to a fourth- or fifth-century liturgical practise in Jerusalem, which continued to the ninth century at least and perhaps the twelfth. The script used here is also of extreme rarity, a ‘mixed script’ of majuscules with minuscule letters interspersed. It appears to have been used elsewhere only in the eighth to the tenth century, on Mount Sinai, in Palestine and in a small number of other areas connected to Syria and Palestine. Less than twenty other examples are recorded. Finally, the quotations from the Kitab Alif Laila, the Book of One Thousand and One Nights, the quintessential Middle Eastern romance, are among the earliest manuscript witnesses to that text. The earliest recorded is a ninth-century fragment (N. Abbott, ‘A Ninth-Century Fragment of the “Thousand Nights”, New Light on the Early History of the Arabian Nights’, Journal of Near EastJournal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 40 hirschler ern Studies, 1949), and some part of the text was commented on in the tenth century by Masʿūdī, who notes a work full of untrue stories translated from Persian, Sanskrit, and Greek, including the “book entitled Hazār afsāna, or the thousand tales.” Complete codices are known only from only the fourteenth century onwards. Published: F. D’Aiuto, ‘Per la storia dei libri liturgico-iccografici Bizantini: Un Progetto di catalogazione dei manoscritti più antichi’. Bollettino della badia Greca di Grottaferrata, terza serie, 3 (2006), pp. 53–66. F. D’Aiuto, ‘Un antico inno per la resurrezione’, Rivista di studi bizantini e neoellenici, n.s. 45 (2008), p. 28. £ 25,000–35,000 Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance Figures figure 2 Reused Bible fragment (Matthew 11:17–29, Latin) with lines of Arabic poetry previously oslo and london, the schøyen collection ms 1776/1. © the schøyen collection Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 41 42 figure 3 hirschler Reused fragment of Burchard of Worms, Decretum, composed originally about 1108–1112, Latin. Wrapper of part 127 on ‘Vilifying the hypocrite’, dictation by Ibn ʿAsākir previously oslo and london, the schøyen collection ms 1776/2. © the schøyen collection Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance figure 4 Reused Bible fragment (Malachi 2, Latin). Wrapper of ‘Ten Teaching Sessions’, dictation by al-Ḥurfī previously oslo and london, the schøyen collection ms 1776/3. © the schøyen collection Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 43 44 figure 5 hirschler Reused fragment of Gregory the Great, Homiliae in Evangelia (xxxi: 7ff., Latin) previously oslo and london, the schøyen collection ms 1776/4. © the schøyen collection Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance figure 6 45 Reused fragment of book of prayers (incl. Matthew 24:14–15 [in part], Armenian). Wrapper of part 5 of al-Ḥināʾīyāt previously oslo and london, the schøyen collection ms 1776/5. © the schøyen collection Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 46 hirschler figure 7 Reused psalter fragment (incl. Isaiah 61:10, Armenian). Wrapper of the Book of Forty … (?) previously oslo and london, the schøyen collection ms 1776/6. © the schøyen collection figure 8 Reused fragment of liturgy (Meneo with Canon for St Bartholomew by Theophanes Graptos, in Greek), recto. Wrapper for the first part of al-Faraǧ baʿd al-Shidda previously oslo and london, the schøyen collection ms 1776/7. © the schøyen collection Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance figure 9 47 Reused fragment of liturgy (Meneo with Canon for St Bartholomew by Theophanes Graptos, in Greek), verso previously oslo and london, the schøyen collection ms 1776/7. © the schøyen collection Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 48 hirschler figure 10 Reused fragment of hymns (Greek, unidentified). Wrapper for sessions 7–9 in part 2 of the dictations of al-Wazīr ʿĪsā b. ʿAlī previously oslo and london, the schøyen collection ms 1776/8. © the schøyen collection Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance figure 11 Reused blank fragment. Wrapper for part 1 of al-Mahrawānīyāt previously oslo and london, the schøyen collection ms 1776/9. © the schøyen collection Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 49 50 hirschler figure 12 Reused blank fragment. Wrapper for part 9 of Ḥadīth al-Mukhalliṣ previously oslo and london, the schøyen collection ms 1776/10. © the schøyen collection Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 saleroom fiction versus provenance figure 13 Reused blank fragment. Wrapper for part 12 of al-Aḥādīth wal-Ḥikāyāt by Ḍiyāʾ al-Dīn previously oslo and london, the schøyen collection ms 1776/11. © the schøyen collection Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 51 52 hirschler figure 14 Reused blank fragment. Wrapper for part 7 of al-Aḥādīth al-Mukhtāra of al-Maqdisī previously oslo and london, the schøyen collection ms 1776/12. © the schøyen collection Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 53 saleroom fiction versus provenance figure 15 Title page of al-Faraj baʿda al-shidda by Ibn Abī al-Dunyā (d. 281/894) damascus, national al-asad library 3757/9, fol. 130a. © national al-asad library figure 16 Workmen in front of the Qubbat al-khazna in Damascus, 1902 istanbul, istanbul üniversitesi nadir eserler kütüphanesi, 90580/ 18, yıldız sarayı fotoğraf koleksiyonu (photographer unknown). © istanbul üniversitesi kütüphanesi Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54 54 hirschler figure 17 Reused fragment of a Prophetologion (2Kings 4, 37 and Is. 63,11–18, Greek, probably 10th century). Wrapper for part 1 of the Teachings of Jaʿfar al-Thaqafī photograph by b. violet in damascus in 1900. berlin, berlinbrandenburgische akademie der wissenschaften Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 13 (2022) 1–54