Join us this afternoon for a lecture by Auwalu Muhammad Hassan, who will talk about the ‘Literary Production, #Islamic Scholarship and Religious Authority in 20th-Century Kano, Northern #Nigeria’ 2:15 pm, hybrid event, all welcome!

In summer 2024, we shipped our brand new Container Lab to #Puducherry, India, to investigate the world-famous palm-leaf #manuscripts of Tamil Nadu. Our film shows what inspired this venture and how it turned into a reality. Full video here:

Starting today: our workshop on ‘Mathematical Notes’ – a category of written artefacts that have rarely been studied in their own right, but which provide us with important insights into research processes and scientific thought. Hybrid event, all welcome!

New #OpenAccess article out now in ‘manuscript cultures’: ‘This Is the Table Before the Lord’: Visualisations of Tables and Loaves in Lurianic Prayerbooks by Patrick Benjamin Koch on a hitherto unexplored aspect of the visual history of Lurianic Kabbalah:

In 2022, the head of the Institute of Forensic Medicine at LMU was accused of plagiarising his doctoral thesis from a book – which proved to be a forgery. Our Artefact Lab helped shed light on ‘one of the biggest science thrillers of the post-war period’:

Who would go to the trouble of making imperfect #paper? Agnieszka Helman-Ważny and Malgorzata Grzelec do just that: They want to understand the different technologies that have historically been used to produce this extraordinarily complex writing support:

Our Mobile Lab just returned from a tour de force through northern Italy, where they examined a series of spectacular objects at the #BibliotecaMarciana and #BibliotecaCapitolare, including a Coronelli globe and valuable but severely damaged palimpsests:

Launch event this Thu: The #Jerusalem #guestbook of Miryam and Moshe Ya’akov Ben-Gavriêl has only 200 pages but opens doors to countless stories. Sebastian Schirrmeister uses new digital techniques to explore this microcosm. 2:15 pm, hybrid. All welcome!

How should you deal with objects of unclear #provenance? As a lawyer, teacher and scholar specialising in art and #CulturalHeritage law, @LAmineddoleh offers expert advice on this issue. Here she talks about the most common questions researchers ask her:

Numerous artefacts from one of the world’s most important collections of #Islamic #manuscripts are affected by an unusual form of degradation. A delegation from Tunisia brought 15 objects to Hamburg and analysed them with the experts of our Artefact Lab:

Across time and space, humans have been establishing practices for cultivating knowledge about past and present kin. Our new SMC volume is about one of the most important material manifestations of this knowledge: written artefacts #OpenAccess

We're featured in a long #OpenAccess article in the latest issue of @EU_RESEARCH! It gives an excellent overview of our research agenda:

Saadiah Gaon (882–942 CE) was one of the most influential scholars of Judaeo-Arabic culture. In a new article in ‘manuscript cultures’, Ronny Vollandt examines the history of the Tafsīr, Gaon’s translation of the #Tora into #Arabic: #OpenAccess

The Library & Archives of the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew holds almost every kind of archival document imaginable. Among them is a single-leaf letter bearing witness to the unlikely union of two very different botanic traditions: our #ArtefactoftheMonth!

New volume of SMC: Brandon Dotson and Lewis Doney tell the social history of the production and preservation of over 1,500 #Tibetan copies of the ‘Sutra of Limitless Life’ from Dunhuang, now kept @britishlibrary. #OpenAccess

Today, 6:15 pm: In the final lecture of our series on ‘Written Artefacts across World Regions’, Elaheh Shahpasand will talk about ‘The Impact of the Idea of “the Masculinity of the Qur’ān” on Ten Qur’ānic Readings’. Online lecture, all welcome!

Recovering hidden texts on #palimpsests has challenged #manuscript researchers for centuries. The focus was long limited to ancient or medieval parchment manuscripts. Our new SMC volume shows how much richer the topic is from a cross-cultural perspective:

‘Be Prepared: Guidelines for Small Museums for Writing a Disaster Preparedness Plan’ is an invaluable resource for caretakers in #archives, #libraries, and #museums in preparing for cases of emergency. We have now made this brochure available in #Arabic:

Hier geht es zum deutschen Text: