Paper in Islamic Manuscripts: Refining the Supporting Evidence
A Lecture by Dr Anne Regourd, Scientific Head, French-Yemeni Project for Safeguarding the Manuscripts of the Private Libraries of Zabid, Yemen and Director, Chroniques du manuscrit au Yémen
Thursday, 20 September 2018, 17.30
Cambridge University Library
The Milstein Room
West Road, Cambridge, CB3 9DR, UK
The Islamic Manuscript Association—in partnership with Cambridge University Library and the Thesaurus Islamicus Foundation—is pleased to announce that Dr Anne Regourd, scientific head of the French-Yemeni Project for Safeguarding the Manuscripts of the Private Libraries of Zabid; director of Chroniques du manuscrit au Yémen; and editor of the recently published The Trade in Papers Marked with Non-Latin Characters, will discuss her latest research on Islamic paper at 17.30 on Thursday, 20 September 2018 in Cambridge University Library's Milstein Room.
Abstract
The study of paper in Islamic manuscripts is field that is expanding thanks to research by paper specialists and a growing interest in Islamic codicology. In order to amass data that will enable researchers to accurately establish the date and provenance of a paper from the materials and methods used in its production, cataloguers of manuscripts must move beyond labelling papers 'oriental' and 'occidental' and collect more—and specific—information than they have heretofore. They must also develop research tools such as specialized catalogues of watermarks. With this data and these tools, one can begin to move beyond the material study of paper to investigate the economics, networks, organization, and practices of the paper trade.
As an example of the work to be done and discoveries to be made, the speaker will reflect on one of the significant, unresearched chapters in the history of papers used in Islamic manuscripts, that of machine-made papers, and show how two types of these papers, 'Abu Shubbak' and 'Alikurna', are intriguing because their methods of fabrication call our usual categories of paper classification into question.
Speaker
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Dr Anne Regourd is a scholar with skills in Arabic textual studies, Islamic codicology, and manuscript cataloguing. Since 2001, she has been the scientific head of the French-Yemeni Project for Safeguarding the Manuscripts of the Private Libraries of Zabid, Yemen. While in Zabid, she started to use the papers extant in manuscripts as a source to write a history of the paper trade. She developed a systematic methodology for studying paper in Islamic manuscripts and has published her research in The Trade in Papers Marked with Non-Latin Characters (Brill, September 2018). More recently, she has worked on manuscripts from Ethiopia. Dr Regourd is the head of the double-blind peer-reviewed online journal Chroniques du manuscrit au Yémen / «حوليات مخطوطات اليمن». One can find a list of Dr Regourd's publications on her website. |
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