About this Event
This international one-day symposium will explore the multifaceted aspects of Arabic and Islamic manuscripts held in libraries across the world. The event brings together scholars working across disciplinary boundaries to explore Arabic manuscript collections at various libraries and archives, putting them into conversation with one another, and asking what new research can come out of Arabic manuscript collections as they are studied, catalogued, mapped, re-mapped, and displaced.
The symposium is part of the ongoing Arabic and Islamic Manuscripts (AIM) project, based at the Library of Trinity College Dublin under the Virtual Trinity Library programme. The central goal of the project is to conserve, digitise, catalogue and research the collection of Arabic and Islamic manuscripts held at the Library. Though the term Islamic incorporates more than Arabic, the scope of this project and the symposium is Arabic manuscripts in the Arabic language rather than the entire oriental collection. While research has been carried out on sections of this collection and individual manuscripts over the years, it has remained relatively neglected; this is the first comprehensive
Programme:
9:00-9:15: Registration
9:15-9:30: Welcome Speech
9:30-11:05: Session One: The Arabic and Islamic Manuscripts Project (AIM) at the Library of Trinity College Dublin
- The Arabic and Islamic Manuscripts Project (Ellen O’Flaherty, Trinity College Dublin)
- Arabic Manuscripts of the Indian Ocean in the Library of Trinity College Dublin: Travelling Knowledge and Connected Communities (Sally Abed, Trinity College Dublin)
- Conscience is an open wound: Colonial afterlives in Islamic manuscript collections (Andrew Sandock, Trinity College Dublin)
- Conserving Arabic Manuscripts (Marta Soliva Sanchez, Trinity College Dublin)
- Digitising Arabic Manuscripts (Digital Collections, Trinity College Dublin)
11:05-11:20: Questions
11:20-11:35: Coffee Break
11:35-12:35: Session Two: Working with Manuscript Collections
- Teaching with Manuscripts: the TCD Islamic and Arabic Manuscript collection (Anna McSweeney, Trinity College Dublin)
- From the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Cairo to the Library of the University of Cambridge: A Lost Song Poem from the Medieval Cairo Genizah (Mohamed Ahmed, Trinity College Dublin)
- Geographical Data on Arabic Manuscripts in the Qalamos Portal, (Christoph Rauch, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, online)
12:35-12:50: Questions
Lunch: 12:50-1:50
1:50-2:40 (Keynote Speech)
From Private Libraries to National and University Collections: The Transnational Journeys of Arabic Manuscripts across the Hijaz, Cairo, and Europe (Professor Umar Ryad, KU Leuven)
2:40-2:55: Questions
2:55-3:15: Coffee Break
3:15-4:35: Session Three: Collections on the Move
- From Maktabat al-Khanji to the Garden Library: Cataloguing Beatty’s Islamic Collections (Moya Carey, The Library of Chester Beatty)
- Vehicles of Transmission? West African Manuscript Collections in African and European Institutions (Susana Molins Lliteras, University of Hamburg)
- The Circulation of Books in Early Modern Aleppo: Glimpses from the Collection at the Gotha Research Library (Feras Krimsti, Gotha Research Library of the University of Erfurt) (online)
- A Scribe’s Life in Eleven Manuscripts: The Mamluk Calligrapher Muhammad Ibn Hasan al-Tayyibi (FL. 867-908/1463-1502) (Kristof D’hulster, University of Münster)
4:35-4:50: Questions
Closing Remarks: 4:50-5:10
The Arabic and Islamic Manuscripts project is part of the Virtual Trinity Programme, and has been made possible through the generous support of Lubna S. Olayan and John E. Xefos.
Event venue & nearby stays
Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland
Concerts, fests, parties, meetups — all the happenings, one place.