Marginal Matters
Explorations into Commenting and Glossing Techniques in Arabic Manuscript Cultures
Published on 13. November 2025
Book
Hardback
432 pages
978-90-04-72068-8 (ISBN)
Description
For centuries, scribes and users have left notes in the margins of manuscripts, paraphrasing, explaining, criticising, and supplementing the main text. This volume sheds light on such scribal practices in Arabic manuscripts, investigating diverse techniques and approaches across the vast geographical and temporal range of the Arabic manuscript age. What similarities and differences can we observe regarding place, time, and subject? And what can we learn from these annotations in the margins or between the lines?
This volume is the first to focus specifically on the rich tradition of marginal commentaries in Arabic manuscripts and seeks to establish the study of commentary and glossing practices as an important source for the history of Arabic literature, Islamic intellectual history, and comparative manuscript studies.
Contributors are Berat Acil, Philip Bockholt, Stefanie Brinkmann, Nadja Danilenko, Verena Klemm, Boris Liebrenz, Nadine Loehr, Darya Ogorodnikova, Deborah Schlein and Florian Sobieroj.
This volume is the first to focus specifically on the rich tradition of marginal commentaries in Arabic manuscripts and seeks to establish the study of commentary and glossing practices as an important source for the history of Arabic literature, Islamic intellectual history, and comparative manuscript studies.
Contributors are Berat Acil, Philip Bockholt, Stefanie Brinkmann, Nadja Danilenko, Verena Klemm, Boris Liebrenz, Nadine Loehr, Darya Ogorodnikova, Deborah Schlein and Florian Sobieroj.
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Leiden
Netherlands
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 155 mm
Thickness: 24 mm
Weight
776 gr
ISBN-13
978-90-04-72068-8 (9789004720688)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Stefanie Brinkmann, Ph.D., is research fellow at the "Bibliotheca Arabica" project (Saxon Academy of Sciences in Leipzig). She is trained in the fields of Arabic, Islamic, Persian, and Roman Studies, and published on Arabic poetry, hadith, and manuscript studies.
Content
Foreword
Preface
List of Figures and Tables
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Mapping the Field
?Stefanie Brinkmann
Part 1: Methodological Approaches and Issues of Classification
1 Putting Margins in Context: Some Practical Considerations
?Boris Liebrenz
2 Filling in the Blanks: Annotating Soninke Ajami Manuscripts
?Darya Ogorodnikova
3 At the High End of Learning: Note-Taking and Commentary Practices of a Nineteenth-Century Ismaili Scholar in India
?Verena Klemm
Part 2: Sciences
4 Annotation Systems and Symbols in Arabic Manuscripts on Astral Sciences
?Nadine Loehr
5 Citations in the Margins: a Reader's Education in South Asian ?ibb
?Deborah Schlein
Part 3: History and Geography
6 No Comment: Marginalia in Geographic Literature from the Tenth Century Onwards
?Nadja Danilenko
7 Partisan Readers: Fighting over the Interpretation of History in the Margins of MS BnF, Arabe 1825
?Boris Liebrenz
8 Footnotes in Premodern Times? On the Phenomenon of Minhiyyat in Persian Texts
?Philip Bockholt
Part 4: Religion
9 Carullah Efendi (d. 1151/1738) on Ibn al-?Arabi (d. 638/1240): Correcting Misconception via Manuscript Notes
?Berat Acil
10 The Unique Copy of Ibn Khafif's Collection of Transmitted Prayers
??Codicology, Marginalia, Paratexts, and Transmitters' Strategies
?Florian Sobieroj
11 Struggling with the Margin - Studying Marginal Commentaries in a Hadith Collection: Al-Baghawi's Ma?abi? al-sunna
?Stefanie Brinkmann
Conclusion: Common Traits and Differences
?Stefanie Brinkmann
Index
Preface
List of Figures and Tables
Notes on Contributors
Introduction: Mapping the Field
?Stefanie Brinkmann
Part 1: Methodological Approaches and Issues of Classification
1 Putting Margins in Context: Some Practical Considerations
?Boris Liebrenz
2 Filling in the Blanks: Annotating Soninke Ajami Manuscripts
?Darya Ogorodnikova
3 At the High End of Learning: Note-Taking and Commentary Practices of a Nineteenth-Century Ismaili Scholar in India
?Verena Klemm
Part 2: Sciences
4 Annotation Systems and Symbols in Arabic Manuscripts on Astral Sciences
?Nadine Loehr
5 Citations in the Margins: a Reader's Education in South Asian ?ibb
?Deborah Schlein
Part 3: History and Geography
6 No Comment: Marginalia in Geographic Literature from the Tenth Century Onwards
?Nadja Danilenko
7 Partisan Readers: Fighting over the Interpretation of History in the Margins of MS BnF, Arabe 1825
?Boris Liebrenz
8 Footnotes in Premodern Times? On the Phenomenon of Minhiyyat in Persian Texts
?Philip Bockholt
Part 4: Religion
9 Carullah Efendi (d. 1151/1738) on Ibn al-?Arabi (d. 638/1240): Correcting Misconception via Manuscript Notes
?Berat Acil
10 The Unique Copy of Ibn Khafif's Collection of Transmitted Prayers
??Codicology, Marginalia, Paratexts, and Transmitters' Strategies
?Florian Sobieroj
11 Struggling with the Margin - Studying Marginal Commentaries in a Hadith Collection: Al-Baghawi's Ma?abi? al-sunna
?Stefanie Brinkmann
Conclusion: Common Traits and Differences
?Stefanie Brinkmann
Index