CSMC
CSMCCentre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures
Spring 2025New Edition of the Gotha Manuscript Talks
20 February 2025
Photo: Gotha Research Library
Qur’an manuscript (Gotha Research Library, Ms. orient. A 446, f.4r)
This spring, the Gotha Manuscript Talks, a series organised by the Gotha Research Library in cooperation with Konrad Hirschler at the CSMC, returns with lectures on four Wednesday evenings from 5 March to 7 May.
On 5 March, the seventh edition of the online series opens with a presentation by Nick Posegay (University of Cambridge), who will talk about the Cairo Genizah and its significance in redefining our understanding of medieval Judaism and Jewish history in the Middle East, highlighting recent discoveries made through Genizah sources, including documents related to economic history and intercultural relations between Jewish and Islamic communities in Cairo.
The second talk of the series will be given by CSMC researcher Alba Fedeli on 19 March. She will share insights from her ongoing research project entitled ‘What is in a Scribe’s Mind and Inkwell’. In her discussion of the Gotha collection of early Qur’an manuscripts, she will show some elements in the manuscripts the that appear both seemingly identical and seemingly different that have been interpreted and solved by applying archaeometrical philology in the CSMC’s Artefact Lab.
On 2 April, Nir Shafir (University of California, San Diego) talks about ‘The Social Effects and Vanishing Traces of Pamphlets and Other Ephemeral Texts in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire’, providing a new picture of the entire ecosystem of books in the manuscript culture of the early modern Ottoman Empire and in particular of the possibility of tracing ephemeral works in the manuscript record.
The series ends on 7 May with a presentation by Paul Love (Al Akhawayn University, Ifrane), who discusses the manuscript culture of Ibadi Muslim communities in the Maghrib, highlighting their migratory traditions and the movement of scholars over the past millennium. It focuses on the manuscript libraries from the 19th and 20th centuries, using these texts to explore the lives of individual scholars and their travels across northern Africa, the Mediterranean, western Asia, and the East African Coast.
All lectures talk place on Wednesday evenings and start at 6:15 pm. Information on previous editions of the series can be found here.
