New essay today, taking a stab at making sense of our historical and political context as scholars of Islamicate history and deeply involved in digital humanities- with all of the fraught implications that involvement carries:
n still another hand there is a lovely duʿāʾ for the alleviation of need, "Jibrāʾīl taught it to the Prophet of God Yūsuf, upon him be peace," iterations of this prayer can be found readily online today
There are two- possibly three- ownership notes, the possible third having been quite vigorously erased, while another owner and/or reader (whose Arabic is rather colloquial) added what I suppose we could call a book blurb, it's bit hyperbolic but then that tends to be the nature of the book blurb
In this week's Arabic reading group we began working through SBB Wetzstein II 1743, a copy of a manāqib of ʿAdī ibn Musāfir- except that at some point it was reworked into a manāqib of Aḥmad ibn al-Rifāʿī through strategic erasure and rewriting. Lots going on in the title page:
A wonderful array of paratextual features are on fine display in this massive (526 folios) 1642 Ottoman Turkish mecmū'a that encompassed an array of genres and authors, the joint work of the münādī Aḥmed Ibn Mūsā and the kātib Muṣṭafā Ibn Aḥmed (SBB Ms. or. quart. 1988):
Opening page of a gorgeous bilingual translation of the Gospels of St. Matthew & St. Mark (probably had the rest at some point, is now fragmentary), Ottoman Turkish in an elegant nastaʿliq hand on the left, in Latin on the right, copied in 1660 somewhere in the Ottoman world (SBB Ms. or. oct. 3960):
Fragment of ancient Greek papyrus with handwritten text, featuring overlaid captions: "Hidden stories: gravedigger families from 1,800 years ago" and "Using digitised items to find hidden stories in Greek papyri.
Newly digitised Greek papyri from the Bodleian reveal the lives of ancient Egyptian gravediggers, including working as carers and taking part in legal affairs. 📜
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First in a series of posts exploring a Persian translation of an Arabic work by a Safavid scholar (born in the Ottoman Empire) and contained within a South Asian compilation by an initiate of the Shaṭṭārīyah sufi lineage, whew:
While the Persianate chahar bagh style of gardening is a bit more formal than the way in which I tend to garden- a mix of the formal and the semi-wild- part of me can definitely imagine one day building something like Babur's garden here, perhaps with a more permeable wall:
This semester we are facilitating not one, not two, but THREE manuscript reading groups, with an Arabic-specific group starting this Wednesday! Check out our newsletter for more details, and DM/email if you'd like to sign up!
Ottoman Turkish meets on Mondays from 10 am to 12 pm (Eastern US time), Persian/Arabic on Fridays during the same time slot. If you'd like to join email, DM, etc, and we'll get you signed up!
In 2026 our two weekly Zoom-hosted manuscript reading groups will continue: in Ottoman Turkish we'll continue working on our anonymous travel account Fisher MSS 03218, while our Persian/Arabic group will tackle new texts from the Safīnat Baḥr al-muḥīt. We'd love to have you join us!
The angels (bar one) bow down before the newly created Adam, from a 1575 copy of the Majālis al-'ushshāq (BnF Supplément Persan 776):
New post describing my work of late on a fun little story contained in a diverse corpus of manuscripts spanning quite a long chronological period, from origins in Old Anatolian Turkish up to lithograph and print editions near the end of Ottoman Turkish being written in Arabic script:
New post by @jparkesallen.bsky.social on our new Substack newsletter, subscribe if you'd like regular updates and essays, some of which will be integrated with new video interviews and other material we plan on releasing soon!
After a hiatus in (remembering to) record and post our Friday sessions, we've gotten back on track with our recording and uploading to our YouTube channel, so if you miss a Friday Persian session you can follow along later! Have a look at this week's session:
@jparkesallen.bsky.social
@mtmiller.bsky.social
"[T]he initiative will provide free, global access to a constantly expanding body of classical and modern Persian texts. The project will also partner with institutions to help safeguard thousands of at-risk manuscripts and rare books from collections in India, Pakistan and beyond."
A really lovely copy of an Ottoman Turkish fatwa concerning coffee (Ṣūrat-i fetvā der ḥaḳḳ-i ḳaḥve ve cevāb-i marḥūm-i Būstānzāde), decidedly stylistically unusual rendering for a document of this sort; part of a truly miscellaneous mecmَū'a (Leipzig University, Vollers 1019):
حكى بعض الاخوان بأنه قد ورد إلى عين الحياة وأنها موجودة إلى الآن بارض من داخل اليمن وهي براس جبل وهي من مدينة صنعا مسافة اثنين وعشرين يوما فإذا وصل الانسان لذلك الجبل وجد باب العين ينزل له باثني عشر درجه ويشربون منها بعض الصلحا الواصلين وليس يبقون في الحياة مثل الخضر عليه السلام وهذه السعادة ما سبقت لاحد غيره واذا شربوا من تلك العين الصلحاء الذين قسم الله لهم نصيب يعيشون إلى الماية سنة ويزيدون
big if true
Unidentified men grabbing someone off the street and putting her in a car because she wrote an op-Ed. This as flatly authoritarian as anything we’ve seen in this country in a very long time.
Pages from a Chinese-language explanation of the Arabic alphabet, Tianfang zimu jieyi 天方字母解义, a Qing era work written by the prolific Han Kitab author Liu Zhi (1669–1764):
Manuscript reading groups resume this week after our spring break last week, further explorations in the Safīnat on Persian Tuesday, Dāstān-ı Aṣḥābü'l-kehf on Ottoman Wednesday, and more Persian in the form of Risālah dar dam zadan on Friday- hope to see you at some of these offerings!
Lots of manuscript reading options this week! Dāstān-i Bahrām wa Bihrūz on Persian Tuesday, Dāstān-ı Aṣḥābü'l-kehf on Ottoman Wednesday, and more of the life of the Druze Shaykh al-Fāḍil on Friday followed by more Persian in the form of Risālah dar dam zadan
OpenITI Open Hours (Friday 10 am -12 pm Eastern US time) will feature manuscripts presented by two of our colleagues: from 10 to 11 we'll continue looking at a Druze hagiographical text in Arabic, and from 11 to 12 we'll be introduced to a Persian treatise on breath control:
