Early Christian Arabic Colophons from the Palestinian Monasteries: A Comparative Analysis

Tarras, Peter und Hjälm, Miriam L. (2023): Early Christian Arabic Colophons from the Palestinian Monasteries: A Comparative Analysis. In: Kiraz, George A. und Schmidtke, Sabine (Hrsg.): Literary Snippets: Colophons Across Space and Time. Gorgias Handbooks, Bd. 64. Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press. S. 119-168

Abstract

The present study offers a comparative analysis of colophons written in Arabic by Christian scribes at the monasteries of Saint Chariton, Saint Sabas, and Saint Catherine in the ninth and tenth centuries CE. These monasteries have played a crucial role in the formation of the early Christian Arabic manuscript tradition. The colophons of these manuscripts provide the most immediate access to the socio-cultural milieu of their producers. The present study is based on a selection of 20 colophons, which are explicitly connected to one of the three monasteries.

Our main aim is to draft a typology of early Christian Arabic colophons as a means to investigate the various issues surrounding emergent Christian Arabic scribality. Additionally, we will discuss paleographical features of the handwriting of the scribes who authored the colophons discussed here. As we will show, these can be used to connect anonymous colophons and manuscripts without colophons, at least with some probability, to the workshops of these monasteries. Overall, our aim is to highlight the microhistorical significance of early Christian Arabic colophons, which not only offer spatio-temporal, prosopographical, social, intellectual, and, to some extent, economic coordinates for the contextualisation of early Christian Arabic manuscript production, but also allow us to catch a glimpse of early Christian Arabic scribal self-perception.

• Dokumententyp: Buchbeitrag
• Fakultät: Kulturwissenschaften > Department für Kulturwissenschaften und Altertumskunde > Institut für den Nahen und Mittleren Osten ; Kulturwissenschaften > Department für Kulturwissenschaften und Altertumskunde > Institut für den Nahen und Mittleren Osten > Judaistik
• Themengebiete: 200 Religion > 200 Religion
• ISBN: 9781463244019
• Ort: Piscataway, NJ
• Sprache: Englisch