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Islamic Codicology an Introduction to the Study of Manuscripts in Arabic Script



Islamic Codicology an Introduction to the Study of Manuscripts in Arabic Script



Islamic Codicology an Introduction to the Study of Manuscripts in Arabic Script



Fran~ois



Deroche, with contributions by Annie Berthier, Marie-Genevieve Guesdon, Bernard Guineau, Francis Richard, Annie Vernay-Nouri, Jean Vezin, Muhammad lsa Waley



Translated by Deke Dusinberre and David Radzinowicz Edited by Muhammad lsa Waley



Al-Furqan Publications: No. 102 (/1-.j!,.



~~~



~w~ ~~



Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation Eagle House High Street Wimbledon London SW19 5EF U.K. Tel: + 44 208 944 1233 Fax:+ 44 208 944 1633 E-mail: [email protected] http://'www .al-furqan .corn



Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation London 2005 AD/1426AH



Contents PREFACE



.7



FoREWORD.



9 . ....... .10



TRANSLITERATION OF ARAD!C CHARACTERS ........... .



© Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, 2006 All right3 reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or translated in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means without written permission from the publisher.



Al-Furqiin Cataloguing in Publication Data DEROCHE, Fran¥ois, Islamic Codicology: an Introduction to the Study of Manuscripts in Arabic Script; Translated by Deke Dusinberre and David Radzinowicz; Edited by Mubammad Isa Waley. London: Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation, 1427 AH/2006AD. 412 pp; 25cm.- (Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation Publication; no. 102) 1. The making of the manuscript. 2. Codicology. 3. Palaeography. 4. Islamic Manuscripts. I. Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation (London). II. DEROCHE, Franyois (Prepared); Waley, Muhammad Isa (Edited). IV. Title V. Series. ISBN 1-905122-02-0 Prepared by: Jeao-Baptiste Evette, Natalia Viola & Philippe Verona



Published by Al-Furqiin Islamic Heritage Foundation. Eagle House High Street Wimbledon, London SW19 5EF, UK



. ........... 11



INTRODUCTION ......................................... .



Not all books are codices .............. . The role of codicology in studying manuscripts ... Methodology Codicology and its focus of study ..... .



. ............. .12 . ...... .15



....... .19 . ....... .23



THE WRITING SURFACE: PAPYRUS AND PARCHMENT 25



Papyrus ............................................. . Parchment................. . ............ .



. ........... .25



. ..... .32 . ... 49



THE WRITING SURFACE: PAPER ............................ .



Non-watermarked mediaeval paper. Watermarked papers ............ . Special papers . . . . ........... . THE QUIRES OF A CODEX



. .50 ..57 ..60 .. 65



............ .



Basic concepts . . . . .......... . Quires within parchment manuscripts . Mixed quires ........................ . The quires of manuscripts written on paper .......... . Systems to indicate the order of folios ....... .



..66 ..... 71 . ......... 81 . ........ 84 . ..... 89



INSTRUMENTS AND PREPARATIONS USED IN BOOK PRODUCTION ..



.103



Instruments used by scribes, painters and illuminators . . .... .103 Black inks. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ........... . . ...... 111 Coloured ink ... . ............ 115 Colouring materials in Maghrib manuscripts from the sixth/twelfth to the ninth/fifteenth century: fundamentals of identification and comparison . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .119 RuLING AND PAGE LAYOUT ..



Ruling ........ . Page layout ..... .



. ............... 159 . ......... .160 . ....................................... 167



CRAFTSMEN AND THE MAKING OF THE MANUSCRIPT ........ .



. .......... .185



The identity of the copyists . . . . . . . . . . . . . ......................... .185 Places of transcription . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .......... .190 Copying work-rates and methods ........... . . ......... .196 Painters and illuminators .................................................. .202 Bookbinders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .................. .204 ScRIPTs ................................................................................ .205



The aims and methods of palaeography ............................... .205 Arabic book hands: preliminary observations ....................... .210 Future lines of research . . . . .. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .214 Appendix: diacritical marks and orthoepic signs . .219 BOOKS AND THEIR ORNAMENTATION...................................



.225



The study of decoration: ends and means ........................... .225 Manuscripts and the decorative arts ................................... .228 The repertoire of ornament ............................................... .233 The chief characteristics of the decorative repertoire .............. .244 Decorated papers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ..... .248 Manuscript illustration...................................... . ..... .250 . ....... .253 Basic principles ............................................... . . ..... 254 Materials and techniques .................................. . .. .256 Types of bookbinding and their decoration ..................... . . .285



BooKBINDING ......................................................... .



EVIDENCE FOR THE HISTORY OF A MANUSCRIPT.......................



. .... 311



Title page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ... .311 Colophons and dates ........................................................ 318 Sources concerning the history of a manuscript. . ........ 330 CoDICOLOGY AND THE HISTORY OF COLLECTIONS ........................... .345



Theoretical approach ....................................................... .345 Catalogues of manuscripts ................................................ 356 INDEX OF TECHNICAL NOTIONS AND TERMS ......... .



MANUSCRIPTS QUOTED ....... .



GUIDE TO FURTHER READING ........................... .



........ 362 ......................... .373 . ........... .382



LIST OF AUTHORS .................................................................... 396



Preface



The second conference organised by al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation in December 1993 highlighted the need to provide better training to those interested in the study of Islamic manuscripts, and eventually in the publication of catalogues. It was agreed to make the provision of such training one of the priorities of the Foundation. This effort was to complement the projects of surveying and cataloguing Islamic manuscript collections worldwide, which were already in the implementation stage. Two decisions were taken: the first was to organize training courses in codicology and cataloguing; and the other to prepare and publish a handbook which would give ready access to the knowledge needed by those who wish to work in this field of research. Training courses were started as early as 1994 and allowed many young scholars to acquire skills and know-how in Islamic manuscripts. The handbook was still no more than a plan, although the publication of the papers of the 1993 conference provided a clearer idea of what it should ultimately include. These papers were published in English as The Codicology of Islamic manuscripts, London, 1995, While the Arabic version, Diriisat al-makhtiltiit al-isliimiyyah bayna i ttibiiriit al-miiddah wa1-bashar, was published in London, 1997. Professor Franc;ois Deroche, a leading authority on Codicology who presented a scholarly paper at the conference, mentioned that he was starting to write a handbook on the same subject. This information was received with enthusiasm, as no better scholar could have been entrusted with such task. The French edition of this book, Manuel de codicologie des manuscrits en ecriture arabe, was published in 2000. With Professor Franc;ois Deroche's kind agreement al-Furqan Foundation undertook the translation and publication of this book in Arabic and English. Publishing such a book was all the more urgent because, over the years, the need to preserve the collections of manuscripts became a major preoccupation for the Foundation. The traditional skills necessary for both the production and conservation of the manuscripts declined rapidly during the last century. New dangers appeared to threaten the handwritten heritage of Islam. Hence, the present handbook is seen as a valuable contribution to the training of those who are in charge of the restoration and preservation of Islamic manuscripts . In order to meet all these goals, the handbook departs from the style of the volumes previously published by the Foundation, as it was deemed necessary to illustrate the various components of the codex.



The Foundation is pleased to present this contribution, hoping that it wiii serve its general strategy of manuscript preservation and provide those who are interested in manuscripts with a better understanding of the peculiarities of the Islamic tradition in this field.



Ahmed Zaki Yamani Chairman, al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation London, November 2005



Foreword



The present handbook is in no sense a history of the handwritten hook in the Islamic world. It aims only at providing the reader with the basic facts and methods needed in order to understand the physical characteristics of a manuscript. Even in this respect, it does not claim to be exhaustive: as far as the handwritten tradition in Arabic script is concerned, our knowledge of the materials and techniques which have been used through the centuries is still largely elementary. Many collections still await full descriptive cataloguing and an immense number of important manuscripts have yet to be published. It is my hope that this book will stimulate a wider interest in this field of research and that readers will in turn contribute their observations, comments and criticisms to the development of the codicology of manuscripts in Arabic script. The English version is not a mere translation of the French original. It has also benefited from comments offered by colleagues after reading the original, and in certain instances I added information either to complete the text or correct a deficiency. In this respect, I want to thank both the translators, Deke Dusinberre and David Radzinowicz, who spared no efforts to find the mot juste and the scientific editor, Dr. Muhammad Isa Waley, who made extensive stylistic revisions to the draft translation. The generous commitment of the al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation has been instrumental in publishing the English translation of a work which was itself prepared with the support of the Max van Berchem Foundation (Geneva). I would like to thank the members of the staff of the Foundation whose dedication and patience contributed to the realisation of this project and also to pay tribute to the memory of the Foundation's former director, the late Prof. Yusuf Ibish, who supervised the beginning of the work. It is my pleasure to thank here colleagues, especially Adam Gacek and Gerard Troupeau, whose helpful comments have contributed towards an improved translation.



Franyois Deroche Correspondant de l'Institut



8



9



Transliteration of Arabic characters



Introduction



In parentheses the transliterations as they may appear in the bibliography



I



......



a



------if



ubil al-a'shiifi. einii'at al-inshen, op. cit., p. 204, no. 29). 65 MS. Dublin CBL 1466, dating from Rabi' II 677/September 1278 (see A.]. Arberry, The Koran Illuminated [Dublin, 1967], p. 17, no. 46 andJames, Q. and B., p. 89, no. 69). 66 MS. Istanbul Carullah Ef. 410 bis, dated 672/1274 (see Se$en, op. cit., p. 204, no. 28). 67 MS. Berlin SB or.oct. 2291, f. 2-45, dated 689/1290 (see Schoeler, Ar. Hss. 2, p. 312). 68 MS. Paris BNF arabe 1694, dated 600/1204 (see FiMMOD 44). 69 MS. Paris BNF arabe 1296, dated 746/1345 (see FiMMOD 140). 70 MS. Brussels BR 19991, dated 789/1387 (see HMMOD 195).



194



Craftsmen and the Making of the Manuscript



Mosques and religious foundations Copies, especially of the Qur'an, were frequently made in mosques, since at an early stage jurists had ruled that it was licit to transcribe the scripture in such institutions. 71 Evidence from colophons demonstrates that the range of texts copied in mosques was actually far wider. 72 The transcription of the first section of Imam Malik's Muwa{tam was completed at the Great Mosque at Granada in 542/114 7-1148. There are several cases in Persian manuscripts of copyists recording that their work was completed in a mosque: for instance, in those at Karbala,7 4 Isfahan,7 5 Surat/ 6 or al-Azhar in Cairo (the text transcribed IJusayn Va'i;:; Kashifi's version of the Bidpay fables - seems to have been somewhat at odds with the customary concerns of a mosque, but al-Azhar was and is a university where many subjects are studied). 77 Manuscripts were also copied in other places of worship, such as, in no particular order, a zawiya, 78 a mazar (tomb or cemetery)/9 a Sufi centre,80 a khiinaqah (meaning the same thing) 81 and a nameless cell (l:tUjra). 82 Among the aims that Rashid al-Din assigned to the foundation he established in Tabriz was that of copying his own collected oeuvre. 83 The text does not specify exactly where the copyists were meant to work; but we know that the originals were held at a library in the Rab'i Rashidi quarter of Tabriz while the copies went on display in the mosque.



Other places where manuscripts were copied There are also colophons that allude to other, less conventional, situations. Indeed, it appears that copyists sometimes worked in buildings of a kind that may sound unsuited to such an activity. Fortresses, for instance, appear more



71 M. Fierro, 'The treatises against innovations (kutub al-bida')', Der Islam 69 (1992), p. 221. 72 See FiMMOD 76, 90, 196, 236 and 242. 73 Christie's (London) auction sale catalogue, October 14 1997, lot 69; The Qur'an, scholarship and the Islamic arts of the book (London, 1999), pp. 33-36, no. 17. 74 MS. Paris BNF suppl. persan 1864, dated 1261/1845. 75 MS. Paris BNF suppl. persan 669, dated 992/1581. 76 MS. Paris BNF suppl. persan 758, dated 1150/1737. 77 MS. Paris BNF suppl. persan 916, dated 931/1525. 78 That of Imam al-Shafi'I (MS. Paris BNF arabe 1652, dated 827/1424; FiMMOD 126, and Sauvan and Balty-Guesdon, Cat. 5, pp. 212-213) and that oflskandar Pasha just outside Galata (MS. Paris BNF persan 22, dated 1017/1608; Richard, Cat. I, pp. 49-50). 79 For example that of Shaykh Bukhar! at Bursa, in MS. Paris BNF persan 266 (Richard, Cat. I, p. 277). 80 MSS. Paris BNF suppl. persan 820, dated 1081/16~0, at Bijapur; suppl. persan 1439, dated 1234/1818, in Usklidar, Istanbul; at Sh!ra~, Astana-yi Al)madiyya (MS. Paris BNF suppl. persan 1785, dated 1185/1771) and Astana-yi I;Iusam al-Din Ibrah!m, in a series of manuscripts copied between 1480 and 1520. 81 For example the khiinaqah Sa'id al-Su'ada', in Cairo; MS. Berlin, SB or. oct. 3707, dated 798/1309 (see Schoeler, Ar. Hss. 2, p. 85). 82 MS. Paris BNF suppl. persan 395, dated 1568; MS. Tashkent lOB 3907/I, dated 544/1149 (FiMMOD 249). 83 I. Afshar and M. Minuw! (eds.), Waqfnama-yi Rab'-i Rashidi (Tehran, 1356/1978); tr. W. Thackston, inS. S. Blair, A Compendium of Chronicles: Rashid at-Din's illustrated History of the World [The N. D. Khalili Collection of Islamic Art, 27) (London, 1995), pp. 114-115.



195



Islamic Codicology: an Introduction to the Study of Manuscripts in Arabic Script



than once in the records: in Narmudzan, 84 Mohanpur 85 and Ahmedabad, 86 at Samarkand87 , and at Vidin in Bulgaria. 88



Copying work-rates and methods Unfortunately, the paucity of information available militates against the possibilities of satisfactory discussion of these subjects. Though in literary sources references to the 'production' of a copyist,89 and more still to that of an author 90 are legion, prudence should be exercised when these records in fact concern writers who also copied texts, either to earn their keep or to furnish their personal libraries. As he himself averred, Ibn al-Jawzi would write four 'quires' per day; 91 after his death, the reed-pens he had used up in his prodigiously productive life were burnt to boil the water used for washing his body. 92 But because Ibn al-Jawzi was also an author it is impossible to determine what proportion of this activity was copying and what represented original composition.



Copying speeds The sheer speed of executing Arabic script was a source of amazement to observers from early times; in the Fihrist, al-Kindi exclaims: 'It also makes possible greater speed than can be attained in other forms of writing'. 93 This criterion seems to have had some pertinence in the eyes of medieval authors such as Ibn Badis, who explains the terms denoting certain scripts in reference to how quickly they could be written down: 'If the master of the decorative letter (ritmar) pen writes a letter in a certain time, then the master of the twothirds (thuluthayn) pen can write it in two-thirds of the time. The master of the half (nz4) can write it in half the time. The master of the third (thuluth) can



84 MS. Paris BNF suppl. persan 168, dated 1022-1023/1614. 85 MS. Paris BNF suppl. persan 455, dated 1772. 86 MS. Paris BNF suppl. persan 935, dated 1141/1728. 87 MS. Paris BNF persan 126, dated 737/1337; see Richard, Cat. I, p. 142. 88 MS. Paris BNF persan 189, dated 953/1546-1547; see Richard, Cat. I, pp. 205-206. 89 Treatises on calligraphy often mention how many copies of the Qur'an a calligrapher produced. In a later age, a copyist himself might record in the colophon the number of the manuscripts he had previously copied; see Rogers, GENEVA 1995, p. 70, no. 31, and p. 73, no. 33. 90 See this connection Pedersen, op. cit., p. 37 sq. 91 lbn Khallikan, op. cit., vol. Ill, p. 141, even gives a figure of nine quires a day. 92 Ibid. 93 lbn al-Nadim, Kit ab alFihrist, ed. Fli.igel, vol. I, p. 10; ed. Tajaddud, p. 13; here quoted from Dodge (tr.), op. cit., p. 19.



Craftsmen and the Making of the Manuscript



write it in a third of the time' .94 To date, no studies concerned with copying speeds have been undertaken; a systematic examination of manuscripts with intermediate colophons would permit a more precise evaluation of rates of production. It is worth quoting recorded figures pertaining to copyists from Central Asia for the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. $adr-i l.,)iya' regularly noted in his library catalogue the number of volumes transcribed by a copyist: according to this source, Damulla Mirza 'Abd al-Ral)man A'lam Mulla transcribed nearly a thousand different texts, Siddiq-Jan, five hundred, Damulla Ral;Im-Jan, two hundred, 'Inayat Allah, more than one hundred and fifty, and his brother, Mirza I:Iikmat Allah Mal;mud, more than three hundred and seventy. Unfortunately, as the catalogue does not record the length of the works in question it is impossible to gauge the exact quantities these copyists turned out. Scribes themselves occasionally indicated the length of time it took to copy a text, either by noting the date on which they began their labours, or else by inscribing the duration of the whole process. Darwlsh-i dardmand 'Ali ibn Mul)ammad, for instance, declares, in a colophon (to MS. Paris BNF persan 266) that he took a fortnight to copy on two hundred and seventy-three leaves the Mathnawl of} ala! al-Din Rt'tmi. 95 There arc literary works that dwell on exploits of this kind: at the beginning of the thirteenth/nineteenth century, a certain Fw;iayl-i Diwana ("Crazy Fuchit i\li 17 40, from 686/1287. 130 See Chapter 'Instruments and preparations used in book production'. 131 Sakisian, op. cit. (1934), p. 149; also the same author, op. cit. (1927), p. 278, note 5. Sec also Chapter 'Instruments and preparations used in book production'. 132 The problems arising from the use of the term 'lacquer' are discussed in the opening pages of the catalogue of lacquered objects in the Khalili Collection of Islamic Art (Khalili, Robinson and Stanlcy, op. cit., pp. 10-11). 133 !/Art du !ivre arabe, du mmutscrit au livre d'artiste (Paris, 2001), p. 160-1, n" 122 (MS.l'aris, BNF arabe 7219). P. Ricard (op. cit., p. 110, n. 3) mcmions a binding decorated with this technique which might be dated to the seventheighth/ thirteenth-fourteenth cellluries; it was then kept in the Batha Museum in Fez.



Types of bookbinding and their decoration



Several studies concerning the history of bookbinding in the Islamic world have already been published. Texts focusing on a specific period or defined region, hand in hand with more general overviews, can be helpful guides for codicologists in their examination of manuscript covers. The following outline is modest in its goals, intending above all to provide a succinct account of the main aspects of the arts of binding, laying the stress on the possibility- indeed, the necessity- of fully classifying book decorations and of studying closely the



Islamic Codicology: an Introduction to the Study of Manuscripts in Arabic Script



tools used by craftsmen. The ornamentation of items of more restricted use (textiles, precious materials, lacquer, etc.) cannot be treated in detail in this discussion. Moreover, very localised traditions, such as those which evolved in Subsaharan Africa and South Asia, will only be touched on briefly in the paragraphs below. 134



Type I Structure This first Type encompasses the oldest surv1vmg examples of Islamic bookbinding. Their format, more commonly oblong than vertical and their box-like structure, are characteristic (ill us. 79). In the closed position, these bookbindings look like a casket or box - a resemblance accentuated by the fastening system by which they are secured, comprising a thin leather strap fixed to the lower board and twisted round a peg set into the upper cover. These were probably rather different from more everyday contemporary bookbindings. 135 As far as can be judged, 136 they were designed for Qur'anic manuscripts; this would explain the peculiar form that bespeaks above all else a desire to protect the text within. Spines were highly susceptible to accidental damage: indeed, the weight of the wooden boards alone would have warranted some secure means of fixing text block to binding, though this was practically never provided. At Kairouan and Damascus alike, cohesion between these two elements seems often to have been maintained by simply pasting a piece of parchment forming part of the gatherings to the inner boards: this might be either a conjugate of the outermost bifolium of the first or last gathering or a piece (variable in size) ending in a stub sewn to the outside of one of the terminal or initial gatherings, 13 7 or else pasted to the inner side of the first or last leaf. 138 In many cases at Kairouan, Georges Man;:ais and Louis Poinssot observed holes in the midpoint of the boards, near the spine, in which strands of thread could still be seen. They interpreted these holes as evidence of a technique designed to fix the bookblock to the binding by securing the boards with the sewing thread.139 Once bound, the gatherings were sewn onto a parchment lining or cloth scrim concealed behind the spine. Though it had the advantage of being easy to make, the system had the drawback of being inherently fragile, and the



134 For the former group, see the bibliographical information in note 26 above. 135 Surviving evidence from this period is extremely rare: the binding of the papyrus codex of lbn Wahb has been referred to above (see note 34). As was noted above, the inlaid wooden plaque in the Museum fiir islamische Kunst in Berlin cannot have been a bookbinding. 136 A substantial proportion of these bookbindings arc no longer atlixed to the manuscripts they once protected. For this reason firm conclusions are impossible. 137 Arnold and Grohmann, op. cit., p. 46; Mar