Current Dissertation Projects

Devotional poems dedicated to the Prophet Muḥammad are widely circulated in Mali both in written and oral forms. Although Arabic is the main language both in manuscripts and performance, local languages (in this case, Songhay) play a significant role. Some poems have been transmitted in Arabic with Songhay annotations, some have been translated from Arabic into Songhay, some composed in Songhay, and some recited both in Arabic and Songhay. The relationship between the two languages against the backdrop of the spoken and written domains has not been studied and this thesis will investigate the factors behind the transformation from the Arabic-based to the Songhay-based manuscripts and performance.

This project analyses a corpus of six West African manuscripts kept in the Wellcome Library, London. Aligning with the general theme of the collection, these manuscripts fit into the topic of ‘healing’ or ‘medicinal’ manuscripts, more specifically into the genre of texts often headlined Fawāʾid (Ar. ‘usefulness, useful [note]’, sg. Fā ʾida). These Fawā ʾid have only in very recent times begun to garner interest and have historically been subsumed with other kinds of manuscripts. Nonetheless, they merit a closer look due to their separate and unique characteristics and agency.

The aim of this project is threefold: Firstly, to provide a linguistic and textual study of a clearly delimited corpus West African Fawāʾid manuscripts. Since the manuscripts come from two different, but clearly identifiable, linguistic and cultural regions of West Africa (Senegambia and Central Western Nigeria), this also permits a comparative view on this genre of manuscripts in the wider region. Secondly, to investigate in detail the material aspects of these manuscripts, focussing especially on the writing supports. Concerning those, an analysis of the watermarks of the papers used for the production of the manuscripts is envisaged, with an additional focus on possible ‘re-uses’ of lined and pre-printed papers, which suggests contacts of the authors to the colonial forces present at the time of the manuscripts’ production. Thirdly, the project undertakes an inquiry into the provenance of these six manuscripts, which, despite forming an artificial conglomerate for the sake of this investigation, came to the collection on their own separate trajectories, from different sources, and at different times.

Le Songhay écrit en caractère arabe dans les manuscrits (Ajami) islamiques de Tombouctou et de Djenné au Mali est l’axe central de notre recherche, qu’il s’agisse des styles d’écriture qui le caractérisent et les variations dialectales Songhay par lesquelles il est établi. Malgré que ce Songhay écrit ait été aussi utilisé dans les manuscrits comme moyen d’enseignement à côté de la langue arabe, il n’a pas suscité assez d’engouement auprès des chercheurs que ce soient nationaux ou internationaux. Pour combler ce vide quelque peu ignoré, cette thèse se donne pour mission de faire une étude descriptive, comparative et analytique des manuscrits Ajami annotés à Songhay pour examiner les types d’écritures des annotations par rapport aux autres contenus du texte et les variantes linguistiques Songhay afin de comprendre le lien entre le choix scriptural et linguistique. Cette recherche va enrichir considérablement notre connaissance sur la dialectologie Songhay et sa distribution, le choix des styles d’écriture et tout ce qui a pu motiver cela comme la domination dialectale, le niveau d’instruction du scribe et ou le lieu de la production des manuscrits.

This project is part of RFH05.

Ethiopia has long-standing manuscript production practices. The practice of Ethiopian manuscript production’s long history seems to have been uninterrupted and continued since Late Antiquity. This places Ethiopia in a unique position because the country is one of the few countries with ongoing active scribal practice and mass production of manuscripts. This allows us to trace the continuities, changes, and innovative practices within one tradition. This culture has been little studied, with scarce studies about the professional history of scribes and the contemporary changes, continuities, and innovative practices of manuscript production in the in twenty-first century Gondar area.

ʾAndābet is a district located in the southeastern part of the Gondar area, known for its rich history as a centre of calligraphy. The district is home to churches established 400 to 500 years ago, which are linked to the region’s continuing tradition of scribal practice. ʾAndābet has the highest manuscript production in the Gondar area. More than two hundred individuals in the area work as scribes either independently or alongside their agricultural activities. ʾAndābet has numerous manuscripts and skilled professionals engaged in scribal work, making the place widely recognised as a centre for professional scribes. Today, the scribes of ʾAndābet continue to produce a vast and varied number of manuscripts in the Gondar area. Using the primary source data collection method through fieldwork in Ethiopia; Observations, interviews, and digitisation of manuscripts in private collections are applied to execute this project.

In the twenty-first century Ethiopian Gondar area, scribal practice is mostly found in private hands as scribes work in the profession as a means of income. The institutions that mostly commission manuscripts from these private scribes are monasteries. The project aims to examine: nine selected scribe’s professional history, their practices of manuscript production with cataloguing of selected scribes’ manuscripts among the scribes in twenty-first century Gondar area.

Islam was introduced to the Kanem-Borno empire, located north of Lake Chad, during the 9th and 11th centuries. By the seventeenth century, Borno, as the political and theological heir to ancient Kanem, had adopted Islam for nearly five centuries. (Elori, 2014; Falola & Heaton, 2008; Bondarev, 2022, Bondarev, 2014b).

The Borno Qur’ans, as a religious and educational heritage of Borno, accompanied with extensive glosses and annotations in both Arabic and Ajami (Old Kanembu) written in Arabic script, likely trace their origins to much earlier exegetical practices, spanning several centuries and predating the completion of the earliest known manuscript in 1669 (Bondarev, 2013a; 2013b; 2014; 2019b). Borno Qur’an manuscripts, totaling 13, are stored in various repositories and feature rich annotations that function as a link between the Qur’anic text and its audience. They provide insights into intricate concepts, clarify ambiguous passages, and offer historical and cultural context (Bondarev, 2014b). Two primary annotations are found in Borno Qur’an manuscripts. According to Bondarev (2014b), Kanembu glosses were written by students, and Arabic commentaries were written by teachers or individuals with advanced knowledge of tafsir studies.

In the context of Qur’anic exegesis (tafsīr) (Bondarev, 2022), the annotations within Borno Qur’ans cover diverse levels of translation, addressing tafsir, semantics, and grammars, in both Arabic and Old Kanembu. Despite numerous studies exploring these linguistic levels, a gap remains, and a comprehensive investigation into the linguistic traditions present across all Borno Qur’ans has not been conducted.

This research seeks to fill this void by undertaking the task of reconstructing a linguistic tradition within the bilingual paratexts of Borno Qur'ans. This endeavour makes a substantial contribution to the understanding of linguistic traditions and scribal transitional practices, thereby enriching our comprehension of the historical and linguistic context of these manuscripts through a comprehensive study.

an abstract will follow soon

From the early days of the Greek polis onwards (mid-7th century BCE), laws have been recorded on stone or bronze and displayed in various places of the city. They are found on the walls of public buildings, on rocks surrounding open spaces or on artefacts especially produced for the purpose of carrying an inscription, as stelai or blocks. Research questions about literacy in these early communities, as well as in the city-states of Classical and Hellenistic Greece, often consider such texts as manifestations of the self-government of the polis, making it possible for its citizens to consult the laws. Other approaches stress the symbolic character of the written artefacts, denying broad literacy among the citizens of the polis and perceiving them as symbols of elite-power.

The communicative power of inscriptions is largely undisputed in the traditional study of Greco-Roman epigraphy, and often forms the centre-piece of the definition of ‘inscription’. It is one of the aims of Research Field B to challenge this view by scrutinizing evidence from different cultures of writing. This project targets a specific group of written artefacts, which per definitionem could be seen as ‘communicating’: legal regulations that request behaving in a certain way or refraining from certain actions. As ancient Greek law usually concentrates on procedural prescriptions rather than on material law, the formulations raise questions about how these inscribed monuments are perceived. Thus, rather than specifying “Theft is the physical removal of an object without the consent of the owner” we would find “If somebody steals the cattle of the sanctuary, he shall be brought to the court of the city by anybody who volunteers to do so”. Are these texts meant to be a ‘code of conduct’ and read in order to get instructions? In order to determine in which ways such a rule of law would be conceived when inscribed within the realm of a Greek polis, the material qualities of the carrier must be taken into account: the properties of the writing, the placing of the object and therefore the principal visibility, readability and comprehensibility of the written artefact.

The prominent Greek polis Athens serves as a case study for this project. It provides the largest range of epigraphic, literary and well-documented archaeological sources. The evidence for the phenomenon starts at the 7th century BCE and is to be found until late imperial times (3rd/4th century CE), which allows for tracing developments in the use of written artefacts over an extended period of time. Against this background, this project will establish ways to describe what could and could not be read, understood and followed by Athenian citizens as well as foreigners.

This project is part of RFB07.

Books and paper conservators play a crucial role in preserving the world’s cultural heritage. By preserving the physical condition of a paper-based object or manuscript, the conservator helps preserve our tangible history. The conservator works according to a code of ethics that is taught during training, and thus assumes an obligation to cultural heritage and society. Graduate conservation programmes offer extensive training in conservation science and manual skills. Although there are professional training structures and teaching methods in conservation sciences in Central Europe, these are not available everywhere in the world. Consequently, cultural heritage in some parts of the world is endangered due to a lack of trained personnel and funding for professional equipment.

The overall aim of the study is the empowerment of library and archive staff in regions with basic or no professional training structures and limited financial resources. Based on case studies, this PhD project examines the need for professional training in developing and emerging countries. Both the role of the conservator as a preserver of cultural identity as well as the extent to which different cultures impact teaching methods are considered.

The baseline conditions are very different from country to country, ranging from no experience in conservation practice, to basic conservation skills, to advanced experience. The absence of local conservation studies, however, does not mean there are no on-site conservation traditions; respect for these traditions should be maintained when teaching modern methods in conservation. Cultural differences are not only evident in the level of education, but also in the approach to learning and teaching. Culture-specific requirements, such as who may study and handle the manuscripts, must be taken into account. Currently, in most cases, conservation specialists teach international students or employees in the cultural sector face-to-face for a short period of time on a special conservation topic. Teaching conservation topics in a sustainable way is preferred. Different teaching concepts, such as blended learning, can be a solution, but conveying practical skills over a long distance can be difficult. Easy-to-use but effective methods of analysis, such as microchemical tests, should be taught to the conservation students so they can evolve procedures for examining manuscripts on-site without the use of expensive equipment.

This dissertation project is part of a joint doctorate between the CSMC and the Cologne Institute of Conservation Sciences (CICS) at TH Köln.

This research project focuses on the study of the philosophical commentaries on Aristotle’s Organon that are transmitted together with the main texts in three paper codices of the 14th century CE: Par. Suppl. gr. 644, Bologna 3637, and Ven. Z 203. The project also aims at investigating and understanding the production and circulation history of the manuscripts.

The Organon (4th c. BCE) is a collection of six treatises on Logic and argumentation theory by the ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle. Originally written in Greek language, the Organon was widely studied and became the foundation of scientific reasoning in Europe from late antiquity up to the modern times. In the Byzantine higher education in particular, it constituted one of the main components in the curricula. The large number of the surviving manuscripts (around 150) is indicative of its wide circulation and underlines its significance.

Generally speaking, the manuscripts of the Organon are multiple-text manuscripts and like other Aristotelian manuscripts, they consist of a core text that is accompanied by a very dense explanatory marginal and interlinear paracontent (text and diagrams). Many aspects of these numerous and very often complex manuscripts are still unexplored, though. The detailed study of the selected codices will significantly contribute to the expansion of our knowledge and will attempt to progressively close the research gaps.

The project will address questions like:

• What is the relationship between the manuscripts selected?
• Who are the authors of the marginal and interlinear notes (scholia)?
• How many scribes are involved in the production procedure?
• How many production and circulation units do the manuscripts consist of?

To support the philological and codicological analysis, a large part of the project will focus on the analysis of the black and red inks as well as of the paper support. The material investigation will consist of a wide range of reflectographic and spectroscopic, non-invasive and non-destructive analytical methods, such as UV and NIR Reflectography, X-Ray Fluorescence, VIS and FTIR Spectroscopy.

The approach of the topic from this multidisciplinary perspective, namely through the implementation of philology, palaeography, codicology and material analysis, is expected to unfold the history of these three manuscripts that carry some very prominent works of the ancient Greek literature and philosophy.

This dissertation project is part of RFG02.

Paper as a writing support is a very complex and unique material. It is difficult to understand at the molecular level, especially since many of its components are influenced by various environmental factors and subject to deterioration processes occurring at different stages and times. There are almost endless possible combinations of elements, compounds, original raw materials, products of deterioration, and environmental substances. In short, we deal with a very heterogenous, constantly changing material. Thus, in the study of written artefacts, paper analysis poses a challenge for both the natural sciences and the humanities.

At present, paper is most often studied with historical and codicological methods (a comparative study of watermarks, papermaking sieve print, or other technological features) or microscopy (fibre analysis). The character of heritage objects and the requirements of non-destructive testing enhance the challenge. As a result, the history of paper is based almost exclusively on written sources and rarely on material evidence. A few existing studies based on archaeological evidence or material analyses of old manuscripts are rather exceptional. To help conservators in their daily work, conservation science has developed a wide range of analytical methods for preservation measures and to better understand deterioration processes. There is still, however, a need to develop both methods and reference data to obtain the ‘fingerprints’ of specific types of paper.

Synchrotron X-ray analytical methods are increasingly being used to study historical papers. However, so far, the purpose of such research has been mostly to anticipate the impact of X-ray photons on paper and cellulose-based artefacts, or to better understand deterioration processes. This project, which is part of the UWA-DESY collaboration (with Sylvio Haas on the DESY side), aims to apply small- and wide-angle X-ray scattering to investigate the structure of papers and papermaking additives at the nano- and atomic scale, exploring its potential use for authentication and provenance studies. Based on X-ray scattering signals, information about the local paper structure can be obtained. The focus of this project is to develop a protocol for fingerprinting specific types of paper, so that we can detect the same or very similar types in different heritage objects.

To further understand the possible applications and limitations of the X-ray scattering techniques, we employ a host of complementary analytical methods of paper characterisation and identification in written artefacts, including microscopic, spectroscopic, and image processing techniques. To correlate structural parameters of the paper samples with changes in the manufacturing process, we established a cooperation with a papermaking studio specialising in historical hand-made papers, which will enable us to prepare samples in a controlled manner. We will also do measurements on artificially aged samples and determine the potential damage this method causes to heritage objects. The database of X-ray scattering measurements for the paper samples collected in this project will hopefully constitute a solid foundation to develop this technique further, and simultaneously contribute to the research on papermaking traditions in understudied areas, such as Southwest China and mainland Southeast Asia.

This dissertation project is part of RFA20.

Parchment has played a crucial role in the Islamic world, despite the narrow timeframe in which it has been used as a writing support. Some of the earliest known surviving examples of Qur’ans were written on parchment, indicating how the use of this support took place in a crucial moment in the development of Muslim written tradition.

However, while the importance of paper support in the same culture has been widely studied, the use and spread of parchment in Muslim countries remains unclear.

These assumptions lead to some interesting questions: what are the main characteristics of the use and production of parchment in the Islamic world, in comparison with those of other manuscript traditions? What are the main historical, economical, and sociological reasons that led to these possible differences? From which animals and species was parchment obtained? Which inks were used in the first production phases of the manuscripts and which in the later additions? What kind of traces and degradation processes can shed light on how they have been used and preserved?

To address these questions, this project aims to conduct codicological and material studies of a selection of fragments of Muslim manuscripts in Arabic script from various areas of Middle East and North Africa dated between the 7th and 11th centuries. By analysing the supports through an array of analytical, non-invasive, or micro-destructive techniques, the research aims to identify the most common parchment manufacturing processes in the Islamic world and its implications.

Findings will be compared and related to other codicological information to better understand the use of parchment in the Arabic context. In addition to the material analyses, cooperation with experts, such as sociologists, paleographers, and Arabists, will provide insight into matters of production, contents, and circumstances.

Examining production techniques and manufacturer choices may also be beneficial in understanding conservative issues and preserving Arabic parchment fragments, contributing to future research.

This dissertation project is part of RFK07.

An integral part of medieval religious life in Christian Europe was a practice of worship and prayer that structured the course of day and night, the so-called Liturgy of the Hours. It is not only linked to clerical institutions and to monasticism, but also – especially during the later Middle Ages – to private devotional practices. The manuscripts related to this practice are Psalter Manuscripts that did not just include the biblical psalms but also additional devotional material.
In some manuscripts the layout encourages a liturgical use, for example by dividing the psalms into smaller sections that had to be read on a specific day or by including liturgical instructions. In other codices, however, the layout as well as pictorial elements point towards a different use. So-called word images can either correspond to specific verses, words or to syllables with or without consideration for the broader context of the psalm. Psalter manuscripts can include these literal depictions of the text in the form of historiated initials, marginal illustrations or images inserted into the text columns. The beginning of Psalm 68 (69), for instance, reads “Save me, O God! For the waters have come up to my neck.“ (Ps 68, 1); the corresponding initials often depict a human being whose body (up to the neck) is under water and a godly figure above who saves the human being by a blessing gesture or by pulling him out of the water. Another example would be the illustration of a sparrow next to the word passer (sparrow). These word images do not stand alone, rather they are part of the visual organisation of the full page: by being embedded in a different layout, the same illustration can fulfil various functions.
This project aims to investigate the correlation between visual organisation, word images and especially specific uses of Latin Psalter Manuscripts; it will also take a closer look at the function of word images, in particular regarding the question how word images can enhance ritual practices.

Copies of artefacts, including manuscripts, have been re-evaluated in recent research, conferring thecopies their epistemic and material independence from originals, including in the perspective of museums and collections and in the production of knowledge. However, research in colonial pictographic manuscripts in Mesoamerica has not yet addressed the issue systematically, albeit copies of these artefacts have been done extensively.

This project aims to investigate how copying practices in discrepant contexts in Europe, the United States, and Mexico, including local communities, affected the production of knowledge about the codices and even articulated Mesoamerican history in the nineteenth and in the beginning of the twentieth century. Primary questions are: how did the production, collection, and traveling of copies and replicas between scholars, collectors and dealers in Europe/the United States and in Mexico, and the local communities where the manuscripts originated, act on the production of knowledge about the codices, and consequently on the understanding of the Mesoamerican past? How can changing perspectives on these cultures be reconstructed via copies? What sort of worldviews are imbricated?

From the point of view of Provenance Studies, the project targets the trajectories replicas did in these circles, focusing on the copy as a rich mediation device. Moreover, practices such as material choices, style, composition, and form should be addressed. Ultimately, the project aims to identify the copying practices and relationships between different actors that were on the cusp of developing fundamental disciplines such as archaeology and anthropology in the second half of the nineteenth century.

The manuscript NKS 50h 8° from the Kongelige Bibliotek in Copenhagen is a fragment of a prayer book which was written and illuminated around 1510. It contains the penitential psalms accompanied by a cycle of images of King David’s misdemeanours. To name a few, the story of David and Bathseba, David’s conduction of a census of population and the killing of his son Absalom. These seven double-page illuminations include extraordinary borders serving as narrative image zones. While previous research has often regarded them as subsidiary to the central fields, they appear to have been designed to be of equal significance. There are complex relationships between both image zones on the levels of form, structure and content. Rather than displaying a simple picture – frame relationship, the central field appears like a layer placed on a larger image below it, which is usually seen and defined as the border. One part of my PhD project is to study and examine the forms and functions of these “borders”. To achieve this, it is necessary to take into account the historical context and semantics of borders in the layout of medieval books. Additionally, the images themselves show multi-part narratives set in segmented and multifarious painted spaces. Drawing on previous art-historical research on narrative, the structure of the images and the narrative spaces of the pages shall be analysed. Besides the relation between the alleged border and the central field, the relationships between the pages in the context of the whole manuscript are also part of the investigation. My PhD project focuses on the fragment in Copenhagen and another incomplete manuscript at the British Library (Add. Ms. 31838). It is likely that the two fragments originally formed a single codex, which was presumably taken apart in the 19th century.

The portrait type that determines our current perception of this pictorial genre first took form in the 14th century: The depiction of a living person painted initially on an independent panel, and later on canvas. Many such portraits bear painted inscriptions that typically refer to the person depicted, although a significant number also refer thematically to memento mori and vanitas. Remarkably, these inscriptions often allude to forms of script and types of material beyond the matrices of wooden panel or canvas. They imitate, for instance, stone inscriptions or slips of parchment with manuscript texts that often deliberately reflect specific epigraphic traditions, notably traditions that correspond to the contents of the inscriptions themselves. For example, inscriptions and their formats often relate to the literary and formal conventions of epitaphs and sepulchral monuments. These connections demand study, and the painted portraits need to be analysed as a deliberate form of an image-text-system.

Considered across the full range of late medieval and early modern pictorial media (or better, image-text-media), the inscribed portrait is virtually unexplored as an independent area of historical research. Problems yet to be considered include: 1) the interaction and co-action of image and inscription; 2) the perception and awareness of “Inschriftlichkeit” (i.e. the semantic status of inscriptions as distinguished from other manifestations of script on a meta-level); 3) the authoritative character of the reference systems ‘inscription’ and ‘manuscript’ with their specific forms of script and materiality; and 4) the meaning of image and script with regard to the memoria of the living as it corresponds to those media that serve the memoria of the dead.

The project aims at a systematic compilation of relevant source material from the 14th to early 16th century in Europe, and following that an analysis of the semantic reference systems of ‘inscription’ and ‘manuscript’ in relation to the textual contents and the pictorial messages embodied in each example.

This dissertation project is part of RFB04.

The Hamburg Apocalypse is a manuscript from the first quarter of the 14th century. It is a part of the collections of the Hamburg State and University Library. The manuscript contains the text of the Revelation of John with a prologue by Gilbertus Porretanus and it is vividly illustrated. The Hamburg Apocalypse belongs to a small group of German Apocalypses within which it has a unique status. It becomes clear at first glance that the manuscript was created under the influence of various sources. Although the illustrations of the manuscript are clearly made in the German style, the compositions and the selection of some scenes probably refer, among others, to English templates. However, it should be noted that the principles of the organisation of English manuscripts have been greatly transformed in the Hamburg manuscript, which offers a complete new system of visual organisation and interplay of the text with illustrations.

The main goal of this project is to understand and explore the new and innovative concept of the Hamburg cycle and to describe its uniqueness. The focus lays on the relationship between text, image and commentary in the Hamburg cycle. The main task of the project is to determine the connection between the original text of the Revelation of John, the explanatory texts in the banners and the texts between the figures, the selection of certain scenes and the choice of certain iconographic motifs for their representation. Based on defining these relationships, conclusions can be drawn regarding the function of this cycle, the logic of its structure and interpretation of the Revelation of John which the creators of this manuscript wanted to present to the reader/viewer/listener. Furthermore, this project aims to identify text and illustration templates that may have influenced the creation of this cycle. To do so, it will identify criteria for its comparison with other apocalyptic cycles and draw connections between the Hamburg manuscript and potential templates.

Based on this research, the example of the Hamburg manuscript allows examining the perception of the Revelation of John and how it was interpreted in Germany in the 13th and the beginning of the 14th century.

This dissertation project is part of RFI04.

The vast majority of cuneiform manuscripts consist of administrative documents. Direct links between this significant corpus and scholarly compositions are rare, and therefore the legal phrasebook named ki-ulutin-bi-šè ‘in time’ after its first entry is a remarkable exception. Neo-Assyrian witnesses of the phrasebook from the 7th century BCE preserve Sumerian legal terms and phrases attested in documents from the early Old-Babylonian period, more than one millennium earlier. In its standardised bilingual version, the series ki-ulutin-bi-šè | ana ittīšu consists of seven tablets with roughly 1500 entries accompanied by an Akkadian translation. The later Assyrian manuscripts found in Northern Mesopotamia (roughly modern-day Iraq) attest to a knowledge transfer from Babylonian scribal centres in the south. Old-Babylonian school tablets preserve excerpts from one or more earlier monolingual versions.

This project aims to provide a new critical edition of the bilingual legal phrasebook together with its monolingual forerunners. The textual history of the composition will be mapped with regard to shifts in content, genre, format, script, language, and archival context. Following an analysis of the connections between the lexical and the documentary material, it will be considered why the series proved worth for preservation and transmission long after the decline of the Sumerian legal tradition.

The first five centuries of Islam are very interesting for manuscript studies as they are characterised by a plurality of writing materials. In particular, papyrus, parchment and paper – the latter from the middle of the 8th century – were used as writing supports.

Coexistence of different writing supports and inks sparks a number of questions: Were they used interchangeably? Was one material preferred over others for specific purposes? How quickly did paper substitute papyrus and parchment? How did scribes choose a writing support: for practical reasons such as price, availability and performance, or because of tradition and cultural norms? Did book forms and formats depend on the choice of a certain writing surface? Is there a connection between the ink type and a writing surface?

To address these questions, this project conducts codicological and material studies of a selection of two hundred Arabic documents from various areas of Egypt, dated between the seventh and eleventh century, using an array of analytical non-invasive or micro-destructive techniques. Findings will be compared both to a smaller number of manuscripts containing literary texts (which are usually undated), and fragments of diverse materials originating from areas outside Egypt. Next to the material analyses conducted in this project, cooperation with papyrologist Naïm Vanthieghem (IRHT Paris) will provide insight into matters of production, contents and contexts. The inks and writing supports used by other cultures in Egypt (mainly Coptic, Hebrew and Greek), and the papers used in Central Asia during the same period will be compared to the fragments analysed in this project. Furthermore, investigations in this project benefit greatly from cooperation with further experts from archaeometry, paper history, and papyrus conservation.

This project is part of RFK01.

In bioinformatics, mathematical and statistical approaches are applied to biological data to classify and characterize the samples that are investigated. This application enables insights into the composition of the samples that would not be accessible otherwise and is particularly suitable when analytical methods are utilized that generate complex data. In the framework of this project, data from state-of-the-art sequencing techniques will be analyzed with bioinformatic approaches to contribute to the characterization of the biological identity and the historical background of artefacts. In this context, we will characterize and classify written artefacts based on different properties, e.g. production material, preservation states and environmental conditions. For the analysis of DNA fingerprints, data processing pipelines will be developed that adapt established processing steps to the unique characteristics of written artefact samples. In addition, peptide fingerprints will provide complementary information that will allow us to confirm the classification results based on genetic information. In general, we will analyze sequencing data by means of established methods and novel approaches based on machine learning. In order to compare, validate and optimize different data analysis tools, simulated data will be generated and utilized in addition to experimental data obtained from written artefacts.

The aim of the project is the comprehensive sequence-based analysis of written artefacts by establishing various bioinformatic approaches. To achieve this, it is crucial to bundle our expertise with knowledge about paleogenetics (RFA04) and to combine bioinformatic and historical findings, e.g. about South Indian palm-leaf manuscripts (RFA07) and Arabic documents of the early Islamic centuries (RFA01). Anchored in the research unit Data Linking and cooperating with researchers from the natural sciences and the humanities, the project contributes to the fruitful transfer of knowledge and methods between disciplines and projects. 

This project is part of DL02.

This project is part of RFB05, an abstract will follow soon.

Since the 1970s, the modern graffiti form of ‘style writing’ has characterised urban landscapes worldwide. The self-chosen pseudonym of the artist (writer) or his or her associated group (crew) is usually the only element behind this kind of inscription – which is often difficult to decipher due to the strong modification of letters. This, in most circumstances, illicit spraying of typefaces is generally done either spontaneously by quickly writing the artist's signature (tag), or planned and realised as elaborated murals (pieces).

One essential characteristic of graffiti is ephemerality. Because graffiti often disappear from public spaces as quickly as they appear due to ordered removal or weathering, the artists always photograph their piece after completion. In this way, they counteract the transience of this art form, which is why the storing of the photographic documents plays a central role in graffiti art, too. Eventually, it is only through the photograph that graffiti art in public space becomes tangible, archivable and reconstructable.

Against this background, this project investigates the private archive of Mirko Reisser alias DAIM, who has been a key figure in the Hamburg graffiti scene since 1989. Over the past ten years, while continuing as an active artist himself, Reisser has established a graffiti archive, which documents the development of the graffiti scene in Hamburg during the 1980s and 1990s. The main part of his collection consists of about 50,000 photos, several thousands of books and magazines as well as materials from the scene, such as sketchbooks or letter correspondences from artists.

The aim of this project is to illuminate the processes of production, transformation, preservation and also the destruction of the ephemeral materiality of style writing in its social, spatial, historical and cultural contexts in which graffiti are produced, received and archived.

On the one hand, it will examine the process of writing graffiti – from sketching to realising, photographing and archiving. On the other hand, Reisser’s archive will be investigated in its entirety as a research object of its own with a focus on practices and strategies of archiving, including his digital database as extended archive space.  

This project is part of ‘Graffiti: Ephemeral Inscriptions in Urbuan Space’ (RFB 09).

The project aims to investigate the codicological and palaeographical characteristics of the Coptic papyrus codex XVI of the Museo Egizio of Turin. According to Tito Orlandi (2013) the codex comes from the surroundings of modern Girga and dates to the 7th/8th century CE. The other out-put of this research will be to provide a much-needed scholar edition of some of the texts that this codex contains: four martyrdoms (Passio Asclae, Passio Apollonii, Passio Philemoni and Passio Ariani) that share the same narrative framework and the same persecutor, Arianus, until his conversion and subsequent martyrdom. The result of the research work will be the critical text, a translation, and a commentary of the four linked martyrdoms, so far published only in the seminal transcription and translation by Francesco Rossi (1893). Furthermore, it must be noted that the Sahidic text is presumably an original Coptic hagiographical work, so this research will provide valuable information on the circulation and formation of Coptic literature.

This project will undertake a comprehensive investigation into the manuscript tradition of Malkǝʾa Gubāʾe, that is, anthologies of malkǝʾ, a popular, albeit understudied, genre of Ethiopian poetry, one which overlaps with the broader genres of hymnography and hagiography. There has been no study to date which aimed to compare how such anthologies changed over time, from place to place, or according to use. Such a foundational study of the extant manuscript evidence is crucial for understanding the genre’s origins, development, and its place within the literary and liturgical traditions of Ethiopia and Eritrea.

Ethiopia not only has an old tradition of producing manuscripts, which is still alive today, but also of documenting its written heritage. Perhaps this documentation goes back as far as the production of codex manuscripts (current evidence indicates that the oldest available manuscripts, ʾAbbā Garimā Gospels, originate from the 5th-7th centuries CE). On the other hand, the earliest dated manuscript from Ḥayq ʾƎsṭifānos monastery, which is from the 13th century CE, contains information about the donors of manuscripts to the monastery and gives evidence about the abbots of the monastery and the royals.

The objective of this project is to identify and describe archival practices and preservation methods of manuscripts and archival documents in the monastic tradition of Ethiopia with a focus on ʿUrā Kidāna Məḥrat Monastery in Goǧǧām, which was founded in the 14th century. Besides this, the project will examine the material and spatial aspects of the archive, the archival space, material selection, and their connection to archived manuscripts and documents. In the Ethiopian tradition of archival practices, documents are archived in three ways: (1) by adding notes and historical deeds in the blank space of the codex manuscript, (2) by binding together new folios or sheets under the existing manuscript, and (3) by producing registry (Mazgab) for historical and legal records. Those archival documents are kept in the same archival place ʾǝqā bet (እቃ ቤት). Based on the textual and material elements of archived documents and manuscripts, this project investigates the material features of the monastic archive.

 Eritrea has a diverse collection of manuscript collection libraries dating back to the early centuries of the Christian era. Some scholars believe that ‘Eritrea is a land of books and monks’ (Villa 2018). Most manuscripts are written in Gǝʿǝz, with some in Tigrinya, Amharic, and Arabic. Most Eritrean Manuscripts are found in remote monasteries and parish churches, some in museums and libraries, and some are privately owned. Eritrean manuscripts are an essential cultural heritage because they contain secular knowledge on history, philosophy, law, governance, calendars, astronomy, medicine, and other subjects, transmitted in manuscript form in parchment manuscripts. This parchment is specially prepared from untanned animal skin such as sheep, goats, cattle, antelope, horses, young calf, and lamb skin (vellum). These manuscripts are also beautifully decorated with illuminations and drawings of traditionally prepared colours made from soot, pigments, leaves, and soil (Sergew Hable Sellasie 1981).

The preservation of Eritrean manuscripts has faced challenges due to political and economic factors and a lack of awareness. However, some efforts are being made by the Eritrean government, the Eritrean Orthodox Täwaḥǝdo Church’s Patriarchate Office, international organisations, and local communities to ensure their preservation and accessibility for future generations, though that is not enough for its preservation. According to Prof. A. Bausi and his colleagues, the Eritrean libraries housing manuscript collections have not been studied extensively. 

Some manuscripts from Eritrean monasteries are also catalogued and microfilmed with the Ethiopian collection (Bausi and Lusini 2018). There are also many Eritrean manuscript collections catalogued worldwide, mainly in the extensive library collections of the British Library, Hill Museum & Manuscript Library, The Vatican Library, and others. 

Very few manuscript collections in Eritrea are microfilmed. Considering the immense quantity of manuscripts in the country, the work of cataloguing and microfilming so far accomplished is just the tip of the iceberg. 

Very few codices are also studied and translated, for example, manuscripts from Dabra Māryām, described by Prof. R. Schneider, were edited, and translated by Prof. G. Lusini, from Dabra Ṣǝge and Dabra Bizan done by Conti Rossini (Bausi et al. 1995).

To summarise, no comprehensive studies on Eritrean manuscript libraries have been conducted; this project will be the first survey of extensive research on the Eritrean manuscript collections. Many Eritrean manuscripts, however, are at risk of being lost or damaged. They are frequently stored in poor conditions and are susceptible to insects, pests, and environmental factors. These rich content manuscripts will be saved if they are digitised and catalogued. Prof Bausi once and again expressed his concern about the Eritrean manuscripts; we found sources of records and traditions reported (and sometimes edited) by Conti Rossini. He suggested a complete microfilming of the manuscripts in the Eritrean monasteries and churches should be done immediately (Bausi and Lusini 2018). This project will fill the gap and concerns.

To address this, the project will digitise, catalogue, and document Eritrean manuscripts in the monastic libraries of:

A.                Dabra Māryām, ʾƎndā ʾAbuna ʾAbsādi. 

B.                 Dabra Dǝḫuḫān ʾƎndā ʾAbuna Yonās.

C.                 Dabra Māryām ʿAylā (ʾAbuna Tawaldamadḫǝn). 

By preserving these manuscripts, we can ensure their accessibility for future generations and contribute to a deeper understanding of Eritrean history, culture, and knowledge. This project is a crucial step in safeguarding Eritrea's cultural heritage and making it available to scholars and the public worldwide.

This project focuses on multilayered written artefacts from the 'Theatersammlung' (theatre collection) at Staatsbibliothek Hamburg. The 'Theatersammlung' contains more than 10,000 mid-1870s to mid-1980s prompt books and playbooks, mostly from the still renowned 'great' Hamburg theatre houses (Deutsches Schauspielhaus, Thalia Theater). The breadth of the collection puts on display the historic development of written artefacts in European spoken theatre over a century: a large number integrates drawings; handwriting persists and often dominates in the interaction with print, early typewriting and the history of photocopying. Above all, the early 20th-century rise of the artistic director ('Regisseur') gives way to a prominent new type of multilayered and multigraphic written artefact in the performing arts: the 'Regiebuch' (director’s prompt book or, for better differentiation, 'director’s log') which, in sharp contrast with common academic approaches, the project will squarely situate within the performing arts manuscript culture as a whole. This holds especially true for the most spectacular items of the 'Theatersammlung': director’s logs by one of the originators of European 20th-century directors’ theatre ('Regietheater'), Leopold Jessner (at Thalia Theater from 1904 to 1915), whose main estate was lost during his exile.

This project is part of RFD08.

Georgius Choeroboscus was a Byzantine grammarian who probably lived in the 9th century CE. He is recorded as a deacon, as well as an archivist or librarian of the Patriarchate. Choeroboscus was also teacher of Greek grammar, likely in a school associated with the Church, or in a higher institution in Constantinople. He composed grammatical and metrical treatises and also commentaries on works of similar topics by other authors that he used for his lectures. Part of his œuvre is also the text to be analysed in this dissertation: the Epimerismi in Psalmos. They offer word-by-word explanations on the Septuagint Psalms, which follow the order of the biblical text, in the form of questions and answers with focus on etymology, morphology, and grammar.

The text of the Epimerismi in Psalmos was edited by Thomas Gaisford (1779–1855) in 1842 on the basis of a single textual witness, the codex Parisinus graecus 2756 (2nd half of the 15th century). The text is transmitted in total in twelve manuscripts dated from the 12th to the 19th centuries. Among those, there is the oldest codex Laur. S. Marco 771 transmitting the complete text; the palimpsest Laur. S. Marco 770 (14th c.) and the 19th c.-transcription of the Parisian manuscript that contains annotations of the editor, Thomas Gaisford, to the typographer (Athen. Genn. 62). Although the Epimerismi in Psalmos were used as a source for important etymological works of the Middle Ages, such as the Etymologicum Gudianum (11th c.), making them a significant part of Greek lexicography, their textual transmission has not yet been studied thoroughly.

The main goal of this research project is to carry out a detailed textual and manuscriptological analysis of all the manuscripts of the Epimerismi in Psalmos in order to understand the textual tradition in depth. The analysis will lead to the creation of the first stemma codicum, and will lay the groundwork for a future critical edition.

The Greek Gospel Lectionaries of the Byzantine period, also known as Evangeliaries according to the Constantinopolitan Rite, serve as a primary source for the transmission of specific liturgical manuscript traditions from Greek, offering patterns for the liturgical organisation in Eastern literary cultures, such as Georgian. Notwithstanding the considerable importance attributed to the Greek manuscripts housing these lections, it is important to acknowledge that the investigation into the liturgical framework underpinning these codices remains an ongoing effort. While researchers have shown interest in the study of the books of the Bible, their focus has often centered on textual matters rather than the textual patterns and their representation in liturgical codices. While the research on the Greek Weekday Lections is incomplete, the examination of the equivalent Georgian liturgical codices is even more deficient. In this instance, only a codicological categorisation has been accomplished thus far, with critical editions (considering the whole existing material) still lacking.

The objective of the present research project is to establish the relationship between the structural patterns of the Greek and Georgian Lectionary systems (10th–13th century) as they appear in the available manuscripts. The aim is to analyse the data provided by both Georgian and Greek manuscripts, explore variations within the structures and types of manuscript organisation, identify potential Greek archetypes for the corresponding Georgian texts, and investigate potential dates for the transmission of liturgical structure from Greek to Georgian.

An additional goal of this study is to compile a schedule outlining the liturgical patterns found in Georgian codices. The research project's ultimate aim is to construct a comprehensive documentation of both Greek and Georgian Weekday Lection liturgical patterns. This effort seeks to showcase the variations between Greek texts and their Georgian translations within the Byzantine calendar cycle. Moreover, the analysed data will lay the foundation for producing an edition of Georgian Weekday Lections and their variants.

This project takes the working notes of early modern mathematician, natural philosopher and pioneer of modern science, Thomas Harriot (1560–1621) as a basis and a starting point to investigate the pathways of transformation within the early modern European knowledge system that eventually led to the emergence of modern science. In this endeavor, the reconstruction of the shared knowledge of the time and its transformation in working processes on one hand, and the material analysis of the manuscript, ranging from page layout and script to paper type and ink analysis, on the other, are expected to mutually benefit.

The notes include Latin and English text, algebraic notation, geometric constructions, calculations, architectural plans and drawings: they are thus multilingual and multigraphic. The non-linear and elliptic character of the material, the irregular and chaotic visual organization of the notes, and the unordered state of the manuscripts, mean that material as well as content-related analysis are necessary and will mutually support each other.

Depending on the course of the investigation, similar notes and manuscripts by other early modern authors such as Galileo Galilei (1564–1642) or earlier authors such as Leonardo da Vinci (1452–1519) may be included in the study for the sake of comparison.

This project is part of RFG03.

In early modern Europe, changing attitudes towards administrative practice and an increase in paper-based communication together spurred on a growing archival culture. With an increased significance of knowledge management, the organization and storage of archival records necessitated record-keepers to systematically arrange objects in space. It is one of my project’s central premises that these storage arrangements’ spatial structures and the predominant archival practice of a certain time and location mutually shaped one another. This project systematically studies how they did and how that mutual dependence may have changed over time. It focuses on archival furniture, rooms, and buildings in noble and princely archives created by noble families and ruling houses in parts of the early modern Holy Roman Empire. My research combines an analysis of three types of sources: textual evidence (e.g. inventories), visual evidence (plans, drawings), and, crucially, an autopsy of material evidence ranging from paper tools over archival furniture to spaces used for record-keeping (both remaining on site and reconstructed from written evidence). It revolves around four thematic areas: Firstly, a survey of archival building structures and their location within noble households and manors will be conducted. Another set of research questions focuses on the different types of furniture used in archives and studies how their usage changed over time. A third area of research brings the spatial arrangements into conversation with systems of document classification. Noble and princely archives both contained familial (attributed “secret”) as well as administrative (“public”) records which became increasingly separated. While demands of secrecy seem to preclude that owners used archives to display social status, quite a few existing cases demonstrate that those who planned and built early modern archives paid considerable attention to representational aspects. A fourth area studies these dynamic tensions in detail. Overall, the project promises to study for the first time how material and spatial dimensions undergirded early modern archival practice in the Empire. 

During the late Middle Ages, Italian merchants and seafarers maintained a transport and trade network that centred around the Mediterranean, but stretched from China and sub-Saharan Africa to northern Europe. For processing relevant information merchants created new different types of multigraphic manuscripts, including manuals and portolan charts.

This project focuses on a corpus of around twenty of such manuals produced in late medieval Italy (13th–15th centuries CE). It will investigate the ways in which knowledge about trade, commodities, geography, mathematics etc. has been formatted in such written artefacts, and how these were stored and used. Inscriptions on portolan charts are subject of present and future research as well, which together with multigraphic manuscripts rise questions about practices of archiving such knowledge. With this interest, this project also closely cooperates with the Cluster’s research field E Archiving Artefacts, while necessary material analysis of the portolan charts – such as of sea salt traces on their surface for detecting evidences of their use – connects to the research focus of A Artefact Profiling. Material analysis will also include the paper and inks of outstanding merchants’ manuals in order to reconstruct the genesis of written texts and graphic elements. Thus, the materiality of these manuscripts will be analysed for the first time systematically in order to interpret them as testimonies for the history of pragmatic knowledge in medieval Europe.

This project is part of RFI05.

In the early 20th century, the Stadtbibliothek Hamburg (now Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek) held one of the largest collections of manuscripts in Germany. Among the newly acquired documents in that period was quite a number of remarkable manuscripts from colonial contexts, amongst others over 100 papyri from Egypt. While scholars have always been interested in the content of those manuscripts and to a minor extent in the history of their material production, a third dimension has hitherto been ignored: the circumstances of their acquisition and their paths to Hamburg. Who acquired them, under which conditions and for which price? How were they transported to Europe and how were they distributed? In answering these questions, this project will combine research in the materiality of manuscripts and analyze the epistemic consequences of collecting manuscripts within the current debates on provenances of cultural artefacts.

Due to the wide geographic scope and regional differences of these collections, the project will focus primarily on one part of the collection: manuscripts acquired in North Africa and Arabia in the early 20th century, especially the papyri bought through the German ‘Papyruskartell’ between 1906 and 1914. Their acquisition in the context of European control over Egypt and its antique services will be researched extensively. To cover the whole scope of the case study, provenance research will not be limited to the place of origin or the scholarly and commercial trade networks, but will include motives and backgrounds for the acquisition in Hamburg as well as the subsequent research on the papyri. The project therefore aims to reconstruct the networks behind the papyri’s acquisition processes from Egypt to Hamburg, while at the same time highlight the connections to the city’s ambitions for colonial sciences with the Kolonialinstitut.

This project is part of RFE07.

The political history of early modern Europe is often focused on kings and princes. Nevertheless, the complex political communities within the monarchic structures should not be overlooked. Leagues and alliances, for instance, coordinated the activities of their equal members, especially towns. It proves difficult, however, to grasp how exactly these cooperative political communities worked: they did not rely on a constitution, did not form a government, or displayed other typical features of statehood. Rather, they were founded during the meetings of their members. Records of these meetings thus formed the essence of the cooperative political communities.

This project will shed new light on non-hierarchical cooperation in Central European politics by analysing how manuscripts formed and structured such communities. The power of manuscripts to keep cooperation going was highly dependent on their status as originals: since they were invested with a certain authority, they could exert normative power. The project will study mainly one famous example of such a cooperative political community which was formed, ordered, and legitimised by the originals produced by its members: the Hanse.

The records of the diets of representatives from Hanse towns, so called Rezesse, can be regarded as the building blocks of the cooperation between towns: Rezesse testified that the Hanse existed, and the rules and agreements written down in them governed the towns’ interrelations. Analysing the power that Rezesse exacted is especially interesting for the 16th and 17th centuries. The study of these manuscripts will shed a light on the fate of the Hanse during this period of great transformations in the European political arena: were Rezesse still used as a repository for practical information, or did they merely attest the former glory of the Hanse? Since the way that Rezesse were and are stored is important for identifying the character of the manuscripts, this project is also connected to ‘Archiving Artefacts’ (Research Field E).

This project is part of RFC07.

The project will investigate the so called Jñānaśrīmitranibandhāvali (JNA) as a ‘multipletext Manuscript’ (MTM). It had been discovered in Tibet and contains twelve works by the 11th century philosopher Jñānaśrīmitra, who was one of the prominent teachers at Vikramaśīla, a famous Buddhist University in East India. JNA is the codex unicus for the Sanskrit text of all the works. This written artefact appears to consist of three codicological units, two of which include one work each, while the third unit is itself a collection of shorter and longer treatises. Nonetheless, it actually has been treated as one object both by its Tibetan owners and by modern scholars. Moreover, the format and layout of the units bear significant similarity not only to each other, but to a certain set of manuscripts which all might have been produced within an institutional framework of East Indian Buddhist universities.

The problem of the complex multi-layered structure of this collection should be studied – through comparing its textual materials within the one multiple-text unit, between the units themselves as well as against texts of other related manuscripts, both collectively and individually. Methods of studying MTM are already well established in Western philologies, though they have not yet been widely employed in Indian studies. For this research project, some of them should be adopted and adjusted if necessary. Finally, this project aims at a critical edition of one of the texts in order to test the observations and methods in application to JNA. Īśvaravāda appears to be the most appropriate for this role.

This project investigates roles and functions of manuscripts as a written form of knowledge preservation and transmission within Indian Śaiva-Śākta tantric early medieval traditions. The main focus of this research is on methods employed by these traditions in their written texts, the objective of which was to find a balance between keeping esoteric knowledge secret and simultaneously benefiting from the manuscript culture in practice. In the analysis of techniques attempting to reduce the breach of confidentiality in the process of written transmission, both theoretical and practical issues will be addressed. Theoretical issues will be tackled by examining the terms and concepts relevant for evaluating the role of written texts in accumulation, development and diffusion of knowledge, as well as its intended concealment and perversion liable for later decipherment. When approaching practical issues included in the scope of the study, I will investigate evidences of written texts as icons and as sacred objects in ritualistic or meditative contexts. The textual basis for this research is a voluminous compendium entitled Jayadrathayāmala and other related texts for initiates in North-Indian and Nepal Śaiva-Śākta tantric traditions characterized by their prominently esoteric character.

The presence of marginal and interlinear annotations in Sanskrit manuscripts is one of the least studied features of manuscripts produced in Sanskritic cultures. While such notes, written in the margins and between the lines of a text, have been largely overlooked by Sanskritists, they may contain valuable information on how a text was transmitted, studied and understood by members of traditional Sanskritic cultures. A typical and important example of a text transmitted in annotated manuscripts is the Īśvarapratyabhijñāvimarśinī of Abhinavagupta (10th–11th century), a commentary on the Īśvarapratyabhijñākārikā of Utpaladeva. Both of these texts are canonical texts of the Pratyabhijñā philosophy, a nondualist Śaiva philosophy that originated in 10th century Kashmir and has been particularly influential in tantric circles. The annotation in the Vimarśinī manuscripts, added to the text, and thereafter copied, by adherents of Śaiva traditions in the course of the text’s transmission, takes the form of longer explanations of text passages, quotations from other texts and short glosses. These additions to the text are representative of the exegetical activity of those engaged in the text’s study and transmission and provide insight into the ways the text was understood by learned readers within the tradition. Reading the Vimarśinī together with the annotation in the manuscripts may therefore open up lines of interpretation from within its native contexts of transmission. In order to provide a detailed study of Abhinavagupta’s Vimarśinī and its exegesis by learned readers preserved in the margins of manuscripts, this PhD project has as its task to critically edit and translate a part of the text (Vimarśinī I,5–6) together with the annotation in the manuscripts.

In South India, Tamil and Sanskrit have co-existed as literary languages for probably almost two millennia. In theory, this corresponds to a simple division where Tamil script is used for Tamil (undermarked in several respects) and Grantha script is used for Sanskrit (including sets of voiced and aspirated consonants as well as a huge repertoire of ligatures for consonant clusters). In practice, however, we know of inscriptions using mixtures of both scripts (often freely and unpredictably) in contexts where elements from both languages occur. Research during the last years established that this is also the case for some manuscripts, particularly in paratexts such as marginal blessings and colophons.

What is not generally known is that mixed scripts also occur in commentary manuscripts of the classical tradition. Even the earliest literary texts in Tamil, the Caṅkam corpus, contain loanwords; and half of the lexicographical tradition, which starts at the end of the first millennium, consists of Sanskrit lexical items, which is why it has to be called crypto-bilingual. Commentary glosses, which rely heavily on these early Thesauri, can thus use considerable shares of Sanskrit. It has recently been demonstrated that even pure Tamil words can be glossed with Sanskrit words spelled in Grantha. However, since the time of early prints, these interrelations have been completely obliterated, firstly because it is technically difficult to print from a double set of letters, and secondly because of nationalist (anti-brahmin) policies.

This project maps and analyses these interrelations on the basis of a manuscript corpus which is already brought together, digitised, and catalogued (Wilden 2014). The main texts chosen for this purpose are those classical anthologies of poetry that are transmitted with a medieval commentary. The investigation starts from the manuscript evidence, establishing different usages by different transmission strands (or possibly regions or copyists) and identifying the ways in which they were converted in the early printed editions. This evidence will allow us to ask broader questions of multilingual interaction in the period when the lexicographical corpus was formed (late first millennium), in the era when the commentaries were produced (early second millennium), and finally in the preprint era when our manuscripts were copied.

This doctoral research project aims to produce a critical edition and annotated translation of a medieval Jain text on yoga, the Yogapradīpa, along with its vernacular commentaries (ṭabo and bālāvabodha). The research will examine manuscripts from the 14th to the 20th century to explore the interplay of Sanskrit and Old Gujarati, investigating the sociocultural and linguistic dynamics within Jain communities. Multilingual manuscripts are pivotal for understanding the linguistic, cultural, and religious interactions across diverse social domains such as education, religion, and administration, often reflecting complex settings of diglossia or bilingualism.
Leveraging a cross-disciplinary approach that integrates manuscript studies, textual criticism, and linguistics, the project employs critical textual analysis to edit and translate variant texts. It focuses particularly on examining language use, translation techniques, and the historical context of textual changes. The research involves a detailed comparison of manuscript versions to reveal the editorial decisions made during their transmission, shedding light on how Jain communities historically engaged with their sacred texts and navigated multilingual environments.

By producing a critical edition and an annotated translation of the Yogapradīpa, the project will underscore the adaptive strategies employed by Jain scholars and practitioners in shaping the multilingual mosaic of their time. Furthermore, the study aims to develop methodological principles for the comparative research of multilingual written artefacts, enhancing our understanding of their visual organization and textual dynamics.

This study will focus on the manuscripts of the Candrakiraṇa, or ‘Ray of the Moon’, a text that gives guidance for the composition of Old Javanese poems of the kakavin genre. The original composition of at least part of the text might have taken place in the 9th century in Central Java, but the available manuscript evidence shows that the text spread widely on Java and Bali and underwent significant changes in transmission over more than a millennium. During my MA studies in Paris, I found that there are at least seven manuscripts of the Candrakiraṇa, originating from the Javanese, Sundanese, and Balinese manuscript traditions, respectively. My proposed research will involve an effort to determine whether further manuscript witnesses can be found, and to use the assembled evidence to reconstruct the life of the text and the circumstances that led to the creation of new originals on the basis of the 9th-century work. The aims of this study, based on a multidisciplinary approach combining philology, linguistics and literary theory, are (1) to reconstruct how, where, when, by whom, and for what reasons the Candakiraṇa, or the originals derived from it, were used and copied, (2) to enquire whether any concrete evidence of its use can be detected in the extant kakavin literature, (3) to use this case study for drawing broader conclusions about the history of literary theory and practice on Java and Bali, and (4) to delve into the Sanskrit sources and models that may have inspired the initial composition of the Candrakiraṇa. 

The word lontar is used to refer to manuscripts with leaves of the palmyra palm (Borassus flabellifer) as writing support in several Indonesian regions, including Bali, Java, and Sunda. This research is focused specifically on lontar manuscripts, to the exclusion of manuscripts made from leaves or bark of other kinds of trees also found in Indonesia, such as gebang (Corphya utan) or daluang (Broussonetia papyrifera). The research is centered on the development of a digital knowledge organization concerning Balinese lontar manuscripts through the compilation and collection of metadata on a website accessible to the public. To serve such aims, an open-access website has already been developed during my previous work in this field, specifically on the platform Wikidata. This platform, serving as a repository for Linked Open Data (LOD), enables the assembly of comprehensive information about Balinese lontar manuscripts wherever they are physically preserved. When available, a Balinese lontar’s colophon is a vital tool for obtaining metadata and thereby tracking the history of such manuscripts. What can be explored is not merely information about mapping historical and social contexts, but also the inherent nature of the lontar manuscript as a movable artifact. Being able to map their movement over time and to reconstruct the path of a given Balinese lontar manuscript leading to its present place of conservation opens up a range of new research perspectives. This study employs a multi-faceted approach encompassing Digital Humanities and Philology. Its primary objectives are as follows: (1) to establish a specific metadata standard tailored to Balinese lontar manuscripts, with enhanced interoperability compared to existing standards in Wikidata, thereby expanding the accessibility of knowledge regarding lontar  manuscripts; (2) to map the distribution of lontar manuscripts across the world by constructing structured metadata within Wikidata; (3) to trace the history and evolution of Balinese lontar manuscripts through the examination of colophons contained within the manuscripts.

The manuscript tradition in Aceh informs us about literate milieus whose dynamics are characterised by both internal and external factors. My project focuses on how the disruptive time of the 19th-century Dutch occupation of the land affected the manuscript production. While the Aceh-Dutch war immensely brought about the loss of a significant portion of material culture, it is also one of the many factors that influence the material conditions for the production of manuscripts, as well as their contents. The current work will therefore focus on uncovering the changes, both in forms and contents, undergone by Acehnese manuscript producers during the Dutch occupation in the 19th century and assess if they had lasting impacts. It will focus on a selection of manuscripts belonging to different genres, selected from identified collections but understudied so far. This research will bring, for the first time, a study of the manuscript materiality together with a study of their contents, thereby highlighting the impact of war on the cultural production as a whole. Some preliminary studies on the Acehnese manuscript tradition confirmed that the manuscript tradition began with the need to preserve the original texts being composed, both orally and in written form. Accordingly, hastily determining the tradition's period from the time chirographic and typographic phases prevailed is not exhaustive for the Aceh context. This is mostly true if we, for example, duly appreciate the orality phase, when some texts on Islamic holy war were orally transmitted in response to the unwelcome Dutch presence. Such texts in due course gained an extreme popularity, which to some extent led to their confiscation and colonial scholarly investigation for allegedly propagating subversive message.

The project focuses on the tree-bark manuscripts (pustaha) produced by the Toba Batak people of North Sumatra during the pre-colonial period, with particular emphasis on the language and the script. Adhering to the perception of philology as “Kulturwissenschaft based on texts”, the original manuscripts will be taken as a primary source and contribute to the knowledge of Batak culture in general, and Batak mythology in particular, on the basis of a rigorous philological investigation.
I will analyse one particular typology of the existing pustaha, the parbuhitan manuscripts, texts containing instructions for divination by slaughtering a buffalo as a ceremonial offering during some sacrificial ceremonies. Besides the primary interest on the specific topic of these manuscripts, this study will also look into some social circumstances of the ritual and the performative aspect of the associated ritual. Particular attention will be given to the connection between the manuscripts and the parbuhitan ritual, and to the description and analysis of the mythological references and their relationship with the performance of the ritual and the performer himself. The research will be carried out in different sequential steps and will be based on a multidisciplinary approach in which philology, linguistics and anthropology are combined with the aim of providing an elaborate and comprehensive catalogue and analysis of the parbuhitan manuscripts.

Our knowledge of Zoroastrians in Iran during the 11th to 16th centuries, especially regarding manuscript production, is limited due to a lack of sources or their silence. The landscape changes with the ascent of the Safavid Empire (1501–1722 CE), bringing forth more sources on Zoroastrians in Iran. This allows us to delve into their history, specifically in conjunction with the Zoroastrian Parsi community in India. This research zeroes in on the Safavid period, examining extant Avestan and Middle Persian manuscripts. It draws on insights from the Zoroastrian New Persian Revāyāt (written correspondences) exchanged between Iranian and Indian Zoroastrians during this era when the transfer of Zoroastrian manuscripts from Iran to India occurred. The project’s objective is to unravel the history of Zoroastrian scribal families and their practices. A key focus is on understanding the role of scribes and copyists, taking into account their technical skills in manuscript production – covering aspects like calligraphy, binding, paper quality, and more. Additionally, the reputation of the scribes and copyists as authoritative priests at the same time holds significance in shaping manuscript production during this period. The study delves further into the prosopographical details of the scribes, the intricacies of manuscript copying, and the historical conditions under which these manuscripts were crafted. Moreover, the project aims to scrutinise how the Zoroastrian manuscripts were preserved and passed down through successive generations and communities.

This project is part of RFI08.

In Islamic architecture, inscriptions are key decorative elements, often featuring Arabic Quranic texts in scripts such as Kufi, Moḥaqqaq, and S̱ols̱. In Iran, during the early and late modern periods, monumental inscriptions distinguished themselves in both content and form from the dominant Islamic tradition. During the Qajar era (late 18th to early 20th century), Nastaʿlīq became the dominant calligraphic style for monumental inscriptions, featuring not only Arabic religious texts but also Persian , including poems, endowments, and construction details. This coincided with changes in the physical characteristics of inscriptions and the development of specialised technical workshops. These significant changes mark an evolution in Irans tradition of calligraphic inscriptions during the Qajar era a subject that remains underexplored. This study aims to fill this gap by providing a comprehensive analysis of Nastaʿlīq monumental inscriptions in this period, investigating their specific materiality, visual characteristics and new functions, and exploring how and why Nastaʿlīq became the primary calligraphy style for this medium. I will argue this shift in inscription writing reflects broader cultural and societal changes in Iran during the same period. In Qajar era, monarchs paid special attention to classical Persian literature and pre-Islamic art and visual materials2. The use of Nastaʿlīq, a calligraphy style tailored for Persian texts, can be interpreted as a part of a broader effort to establish a regional identity aligned with the Qajar monarchs’ attempts to link themselves with the pre-Islamic Iranian empire. This study presents a novel approach to understanding the physical properties, aesthetic features, and functions of inscriptions during that era, demonstrating how these inscriptions served as a communicative medium beyond their decorative role

The Qurʾān, as the first Arabic text besides the Arabic pre-Islamic inscriptions, has survived in form of a large range of manuscripts. The study of the oldest surviving manuscripts of the Qurʾān is essential to trace back the written transmission of this text. The early Qurʾānic manuscripts are only fragmentarily preserved and do not cover the whole text. These fragments lack colophons and therefore are missing any information about the origin, date, scribe or patron. The question of the origin of the material, the geographical spread and the problem of dating form the core of this project. The orthographical forms and variants which are preserved in the manuscripts indicate the origin of the material. In addition, the verse numbering system can also give us further information. From the palaeographical point of view, the study will focus on the manuscripts which can be linked to the group of the Kūfī B.I-II according to the classification of François Déroche. As for the codicological approach, the fragments will be analysed on the writing material, format and binding, as well as the inks used in the manuscripts. The aim of this project is to examine the earliest witnesses of the text of the Qurʾān using an interdisciplinary approach to contribute to the research on the early history of Islam. The earliest surviving manuscripts of the Qurʾān provide a unique insight into the history of the corpus of this important Arabo-Islamic script.

This project examines and contextualises traces of archival practices in the Ḥaram al-sharīf corpus. The variety of documentary subcorpora in the Ḥaram corpus testifies to a world of multifaceted and polycentric documentary and archival processes in 8th/14th century Jerusalem. In the first phase, this research aims to record the identifiable textual traces of archival practices in each documentary subcorpus and to complement this with the investigation of material traces of preservation and organisation through the analysis of the source material on a microscale. This project aims further to contribute to an understanding of the documents’ archival histories before and after they became part of the collection, as it is constituted today in the Islamic Museum in Jerusalem, by analysing the intersections of the multiple documentary, temporal, spatial, and material variables of archival practices. To contextualise these archival histories in their particular socio-cultural contexts, this project will analyse how the strategic preservation of documents is related to the local and transregional structures of political authority. Overall, this research will contribute to the broader debate on archival practices in the pre-Ottoman Middle East and develop a detailed understanding of the polycentric networks of archival sites and actors in 8th/14th century Jerusalem.

This project aims to examine the dynamics of books in late Ottoman Syria through the traces of a Damascene private-endowed library of a ṣūfī shaykh, named Khālid al-Naqshabandī (d. 1242 AH/1827 CE). In the early 19th century, al-Naqshabandī moved to Damascus and established a library with 959 manuscripts. This library presents a unique opportunity to explore the book culture, circulation, mobility, and endowment practices of that time. By using al-Naqshabandī’s biography and available materials, including the catalogue and surviving books, the project seeks to place the library within the broader context of 19th-century Damascus, considering its social and intellectual implications. With a focus on both theoretical and practical aspects, the project adopts a comprehensive approach, incorporating paracontent materials and primary legal, biographical, chronicle, and geographical sources to unravel the stories of book dynamics in late Ottoman Damascus. A crucial material for this project is manuscript No. 259, housed in the al-Asad National Library in Damascus and divided into three sections: endowment-text, an inventory of its books, and the court session. This manuscript (daftar kutub ḥaḍrat mawlānā) plays an important role in understanding the library’s social history through its inventory and endowment practices documented in the endowment-text and the court session. Additionally, the 15 yet-discovered manuscripts serve as a main source for shedding light on object biographies, mobility, and materiality concepts. By integrating these theoretical and practical elements, the project aims to achieve its main goals.

This project is part of RFC11.

This project aims to reconstruct the historical trajectories of the scattered holdings of the library of Süleyman Efendi, once the preacher of the Great Mosque in Buda (present-day Budapest) during the 16th–17th centuries under Ottoman rule. These manuscripts, dispersed across libraries in Europe, are part of a larger corpus that originated from conquered Ottoman cities and fortresses following various conflicts. Like other social and cultural institutions in the Ottoman Empire, Süleyman Efendi’s library owed its existence to the widespread practice of religious endowment (vakıf). While specific manuscripts from Süleyman Efendi’s library have been mentioned in the broader literature, the library itself remains largely unexplored as a collection, lacking scrutiny until now. When dealing with its provenance history, it is essential to understand that a library is not a monolith but an accumulation of historical activities and bibliographic decisions, involving various actors – scribes, librarians, collectors, and endowers – each with specific intentions and needs. A multifaceted and thorough examination is necessary to formulate robust insights into the social and cultural contexts that comprised Ottoman Hungary. By reconstructing this library’s collection, evidence of provenance history will provide insights into its holdings when it was last intact and whole. This project will concentrate on an earlier period, where the absence of information about these objects’ trajectories leaves the manuscripts in reading rooms as decontextualised objects, devoid of their rich histories or reduced to Eurocentric perspectives. The project chiefly aims to fill a different gap in our knowledge by attempting to retrace the manuscripts’ different trajectory stages, from production to acquisition, and re-situating them within their original socio-cultural contexts. The research will primarily use the library of Süleyman Efendi as a case study to facilitate the study of provenance history as it relates to looted manuscripts, with detailed codicological and manuscriptological analysis. Furthermore, as the research progresses, the inclusion of a comparable library will be considered, to enable a broader contextualisation and evaluation of Süleyman Efendi’s library within the historical ecosystem of libraries.

This project deals with one of the most representative manuscripts of the Judaeo-Arabic legacy of al-Andalus: Kitāb al-muwāzana bayn al-luġa al-ʽibrāniyya wa-l-ʽarabiyya (Book of Comparison between Hebrew and Arabic Languages) written in Middle Arabic with Hebrew script by Abū Ibrāhīm Yiṣḥaq ben Yosef ibn Barūn (Saragossa, 12th century), around which a corpus of manuscripts considered to be its main Arabic and Jewish sources is selected for codicological comparison.

Ibn Barūn is notable for having carried out in his seminal work an unprecedented systematic comparison of the Arabic and Hebrew languages in the Almoravid period (1086-1146), which attests to the grammatical study of the Semitic languages whose thought was closely associated with biblical and Qur’anic exegesis, a practice that was predominant throughout the medieval Arabic-speaking Mediterranean from the 8th century onwards.

His work is important not only from a philological point of view, but also from a historical-cultural one in Muslim Spain. With regard to the content of the manuscript, a first approach would certainly be to carry out a linguistic study of Ibn Barūn’s manuscript in order to determine the degree of deviation from Classical Arabic and its characteristic features following Blau’s scheme of analysis of Judaeo-Arabic grammar. A second approach suggests considering the manuscript as a singular object that possesses features in common with a certain group, but at the same time differentiates it from those that do not, meaning that it leads to comparison between groups. A codicological comparison  requires a detailed description of the content of the manuscript and its physical characteristics. These two approaches consider manuscripts as textual artefacts, i.e. as artefacts that can and need to be analysed in relation to their textual content and their materiality at the same time. The material study of Ibn Barūn’s manuscript and its main sources within their cultural context may allow to understand the circumstances and processes that dominated the Andalusian literary field that made its production possible.

Hundreds of Hebrew manuscripts and their fragments that ended up in late medieval monastic libraries represent an intriguing episode in the history of Christian Hebraica collecting. The new keepers of the manuscripts, who could not always read Hebrew, attributed to these Jewish objects a range of opposite meanings and treated them accordingly. Whether the Hebrew codices were considered by them a repository of ancient mysteries and were placed in special cases, separately from other books, or whether they were deliberately mutilated or destroyed as representatives of Jews and even as ‘diabolic’ magical artefacts, these and other uses as a whole attest to one of the most peculiar book-collecting practices. This practice suggested that a written artefact embodies certain qualities as an object per se beyond its specific textual content. Building on this premise, this project examines the process of integration of Hebrew manuscripts into monastic libraries from the earliest extant examples of such collecting that survived from the thirteenth century to the rise of professional Hebraism in the first half of the sixteenth century. Such integration was never direct but involved a certain degree of redaction, transformation, and adaptation of a Jewish book to the new religious and cultural context, both textually and materially. As a result, the book accommodated layers of owners’ modifications, becoming a hybrid object in terms of its language, textual sequence, and materiality. Specifically the questions of how Hebrew manuscripts were changed to accord the role assigned to them in the monastic libraries, and how such changes reflected and, in turn, shaped the reception of Hebraica in a Christian milieu represent the focus of this project. Although this project addresses the specific situation of the books’ flow from Jews to Christians, it promises to contribute greatly to the study of the circulation of written artefacts between different cultures and the modes of their preservation in foreign hands.

The Ŭmsik Timibang (‘Methods of making tasty food’; also Kyugon Siŭibang , or 壼 Rules for the management of the inner chambers’) is a collection of over 140 recipes written around 1670 by Lady Chang Kyehyang (1598-1680; otherwise known as Lady Chang of Andong), a member of the Korean aristocracy and the only daughter of the scholar Chang Hŭngyo. As one of the first vernacular cookbooks originating from the Korean peninsula, as well as the earliest text about meals and their preparation compiled by a woman in East Asia, the Ŭmsik Timibang represents a most valuable source for the research of the evolution of writing practices during the years of transition between the Early and the Late Chosŏn period.

To better understand the peculiar nature and the relevance of her manuscript, we need to study the socio-historical, philosophical, and linguistic contexts in which Lady Chang lived and worked. Her writings provide a new opportunity to explore the evidence and the effects of the rise of female literacy and authorship that was spreading across East Asia between the 16th and 17th centuries, a pivotal moment of political and cultural change in the region.

Thus, the present project combines these approaches in order to achieve two main aims. The first is to gain a deeper understanding of the Ŭmsik Timibang and its individual characteristics by 1) analysing the orthography employed by the author to see the extent of the influence of phonological changes in the written language; 2) examining what kind of punctuation can be found throughout the book; and 3) investigating what can be gathered from its usage in order to ascertain whether the recipes are originals or evidence of circulating knowledge. The second aim is to place the manuscript within an established literary tradition and to examine how the author, Lady Chang, managed to reshape her own role in the Late Chosŏn society from within her home’s ‘inner chambers’ (kyubang ) by becoming a good example of neo-Confucian virtues in an ever-changing world.

Historic Peruvian music manuscripts have an extraordinary potential to unveil the idiosyncrasies of a conflicted nation forged through centuries of colonial heritage. In that sense, the period between 1821, when independence from Spain was declared, and 1888, when a lost war against Chile revealed the calamitous failure of a national project, happens to be of particular interest.

The project ‘Archiving Colonialism. The Collections of Musical Manuscripts from Peru’ deals with music archives and libraries with an emphasis on the Historical Archive of St. Francis of Lima, in which an abundance of musical written artefacts from the aforementioned time period is stored. Other religious and secular archives covering the 17th to 20th centuries will be included with the purpose of contextualising and understanding the shift from the colonial to the postcolonial archival practices and the dialectics between impositions of European music and appropriations by the colonised population. Although actually not many sources survive, both the extant and the lost materials are informative for a value-based analysis of the evolution of archival practices in Peru.

Our central purpose is to reconstruct both individual and collective behaviours and to understand the entanglement of the cultural history, character, and meaning of music archives applying two complementing perspectives: on the one hand, we look at the institutions, authorities, and policies that governed the preservation of archives; on the other hand, we consider the individuals whose particular experiences are profiled by the manuscripts. This material evidence will illustrate the diversity and multifaceted nature of an emerging nation’s cultural life, which still echoes today.

This project is part of RFE12.

Palm leaves were widely used from early times all along the hot climate zones as writing surface. Silk, cotton, and linen, though primarily used for clothing, also became established writing and painting materials since early times. Unlike birchbark or palm leaf supports, which could only be manufactured in areas with certain plant species, paper could be produced wherever plants suitable for its production were found.

This project analyses the characteristics and properties of various writing surfaces such as a palm-leaf, birch bark, wooden slips, silk, and paper in manuscripts, with particular emphasis on the interaction between the ink and these writing surfaces. First, depending on availability, we intend to compare manuscripts from palmyra, talipot, nypah, and gebang palms and their wooden covers by using various microscopic and chemical methods. Then, we focus on birch bark, silk, and selected paper samples from China, Tibet, Nepal, Laos, and Thailand. Second, deterioration and preservation treatment of the manuscripts will be analysed. We will apply the following methods:

• Light microscopy will characterise the typical anatomical structure of a leaf blade and will show differences in thickness and shape between palm species, as well as the structural organisation of various cell types within leaves.
• Electron microscopy is an appropriate method to study leaf surfaces (SEM) and cell contents (TEM) and can answer, for example, the question of whether differences in leaf surface might be the reason for differences in writing techniques
• Chemical analysis (ICP, EDXA) will provide information on the treatment of leaf blades with preservatives while radiocarbon dating will help to determine the age of manuscripts as well as wooden covers.
• Atomic force microscopy (AFM) will provided information on the surface topography and mechanical properties of the materials as a function of preparation and conservation methods. Also, the interaction of the materials with inks in terms of the writing process will be scrutinised by wetting experiments.

In the talipot manuscripts from Northern India, Central Asia, and Nepal, characters were written in ink using a reed pen. In South India and Southeast Asia, letters were usually incised on the surface with special tools before ink composed of soot mixed with oil or animal glue was rubbed into the etched line and then wiped away, leaving only the inked writing. Both techniques were also used on wooden slips, contrary to a bark on which text was written with bamboo or reed pen. On various types of paper, a bamboo or reed pen cut in a specific way or with a specific brush was used depending on paper properties.

Understanding the differences in basic physical and chemical properties of above-mentioned writing surfaces and its interaction with inks may help to understand the historical sequence of various material techniques and technologies in particular geographical locations.

This project is part of RFA18.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, northwest China has been a source of important archaeological finds of manuscripts and printed books. The most significant archaeological site is the Dunhuang cave (modern Gansu province in China). Other desert sites, such as Khotan (和田), Turfan (吐魯番), and Khara-khoto (黑水城) have been gradually discovered in China’s Xinjiang autonomous region (新疆自治區) and Inner Mongolia autonomous region (內蒙古自治區). The materials found there reveal a wealth of new information on ancient languages and peoples along the Silk Road. Among them, Buddhist pilgrimage material constitutes an important category. A lot of research has been done on these texts.

Until the discovery of Dunhuang, Khara-khoto, and other sites, most of the Buddhist monks (except for famous pilgrim records preserved in the transmitted literature), such as a certain Zhijian (智坚), remained nameless. Among the thousands of manuscripts from the Dunhuang Library cave and the Stupa outside Khara-khoto, an abandoned city in the desert of Etsin-gol region in Inner Mongolia, three manuscripts related to Zhijian were found. These three manuscripts together constitute a single record of Zhijian’s pilgrimage and thus will be referred to here as the 'Zhijian manuscripts'.

The 'Zhijian manuscripts' provide new perspectives. This dissertation project intends to thoroughly study manuscripts related to the Buddhist monk Zhijian, as well as other related manuscripts. By that, the person Zhijian, his belief, his journey, and his aims can be put into a much broader historical context. Addressing who wrote the nowadays still extant manuscripts and why, whether they were important or merely jotted down in passing, enables us to judge their textual evidence more precisely. The scrutinisation of each individual text will provide a vivid picture of how a 10th century monk prayed, confessed, worshiped, and lived, and of the origin of his beliefs.

In ancient Chinese texts, there are often paratexts attached to the core text and addenda inserted into the main text, which are usually believed to be compiled later. Even in some texts compiled in the Han Dynasty (206 BCE—220 CE), the outer chapters attached to the inner ones are usually of doubtful authorship or authenticity, such as Mencius 孟子, Zhuangzi 庄子, and Yanzi chunqiu 晏子春秋. This interesting phenomenon of text generation results from various factors, while the reason for a certain sequence of text has not yet been discussed thoroughly. Fortunately, the wealth of manuscripts from early and medieval China provides evidence for the codicology of books in those periods. Some bamboo manuscripts of the Han Dynasty are even at the stage of compilation. Inspired by those manuscripts, the previous research of authentication studies of classical works (bianweixue 辨伪学) will be re-examined from textual and manuscriptological perspectives. By means of classical works and manuscripts, my research on paratexts and addenda will aim at a comprehensive study of the phenomenon.

This dissertation examines the process of building the regime of the Qin Empire on its southern frontier. In 222 BCE, Qin State conquered Chu State, making the area south of the Yangtze River the southern border of the state of Qin. The southern frontier underwent a complex process of change, beginning with military conquests and continuing with the establishment of administrative organizations.

The traditional view, which is limited by transmitted texts, is that the ruler imposed a top-down administrative system on the newly conquered areas, thus contributing to the domination and exploitation of southern borderlands during the Qin empire. Under such a viewpoint, newly conquered areas could only passively accept and comply with the policies adopted by the central government or the emperor. In fact, at the intersection of the old and the new world, the rebuilding of social order in the newly conquered areas is a dynamic process that is the result of complex interactions between different groups. Therefore, we should not only focus on the policies of the highest ruling group, but also on how these policies and strategies are implemented, how they fit into the local society, and what adjustments and adaptations are made. For this reason, by utilizing legal and administrative manuscripts and archaeological evidence in the middle reaches of the Yangtze River, my dissertation traces the policies adopted by the empires and their implementation in the region and explores the historical impacts of these policies.

The Dongba were ritual specialists of the Naxi, an ethnic group mostly living in the Northwest of Yunnan Province at the foothills of the Himalayas. Their manuscripts are of rectangular shape resembling the pothi form, although they are bound on the left. These manuscripts served the Dongba as aides mémoires for the rituals conducted by them. Most of the extant manuscripts were produced since the nineteenth century, but a few items can be dated to the eighteenth century or even earlier. Dongba practices were forbidden after 1949 and later completely obliterated during the so-called Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

Until the turn of the millennium, research focused largely on the translation of the manuscripts’ content and the Dongba characters. But there remain important questions concerning the production of the manuscripts and the transmission of the Dongba tradition, which cannot be answered by examining only the content. In this dissertation project, I undertake a regional study of manuscripts to find out how the Dongba manuscript production and tradition worked. Therefore, a new classification of the manuscripts will be developed that includes information about region of origin, dating, palaeography, and producer. Three corpora of ten to twenty manuscripts will be selected for in-depth study. By including material aspects and the design of the manuscripts, I hope to provide a comprehensive assessment of manuscripts produced by individual Dongba.

In the early 20th century, as an instrument of Central Asian origin, several short lute music scores were excavated in Dunhuang Mogao grottoes. The music scores exhibit notation, melody, and rhythm system and can be dated back to the 10th century CE In addition, a number of the ancient short lute scores found in Japan contain features，which suggest they were produced in China (sometime between the 7-9th century CE),copied and transported to Japan. Many of the signs and symbols in the Dunhuang music scores are very similar to the ones discovered in Japan.
This project will explain and reconstruct how the music in Central Asia spread across the East, through medieval China, and to Japan. It will take a close look at the history of music in Central Asia and the importance of ancient manuscripts and music scores. The project is focusing on coding the Dunhuang music manuscripts, with the aim of understanding their tuning systems as well as the function and cultural value of the music scores. It includes a manuscript study of the preserved short lute music scores in the Dunhuang Manuscripts and those in the manuscripts in Japan, in order to apply the relevant adaptation theories. Illustrated manuscripts and mural paintings are considered to be invaluable materials for a visual demonstration of how music in Central Asia and its instruments have changed and developed. The extraordinary mural paintings from Buddhist grottoes in Xinjiang and Dunhuang contain some of the most intriguing images of musical instruments and music performers. Similarly, the illustrated Manichean manuscripts from Turfan (9th century CE) and the Sogdian manuscripts from Bezeklik (10th century CE) provide a wealth of evidence about the music in Central Asia. Therefore, this research will use these sources to investigate the types of musical instruments and the significance of musical performance for Central Asian music history and music manuscripts.

For my Ph.D. thesis I focus on the work Bodhicittabhāvanā, “Meditation on Bodhicitta”, an influential text presumably dating back to the 8th century which was translated into Tibetan during the first dissimilation of Buddhism in Tibet. This text has been transmitted in at least four different types of collections extant in the form of both manuscripts and block prints, namely “The Collected Tantras of Vairocana” (Bai ro’i rgyud ’bum), “The Tibetan Buddhist Canon” (bsTan ’gyur), “The Treasury of Esoteric Instructions” (gDams ngag mdzod), and especially “The Collection of the Ancient Tantras” (rNying ma rgyud ’bum) of which ten different editions are available up until now and which is the focus of the Tibetology subproject of the SFB. The work has been classified in different ways within the doxographical organisational schemes of these collections. In some it is regarded as a treatise, i.e. a work composed by a scholar, and in others as a tantra, i.e. a work believed to have been spoken by the Buddha himself. In “The Tibetan Buddhist Canon” it is placed in the section of Yogatantra, in the three other collections in the section of Atiyoga – the pinnacle of all spiritual teachings according to the nine-fold doxographical scheme of the rNying ma school. Moreover, there also exist a short as well as an enlarged version of this work. As a case study within the overall investigation of the organisational scheme of the rNying ma rgyud ’bum I examine the correlation between the content of the text and it’s different placement within those collections. With this case study I hope to shed some light on the development of these schemes and on motives and strategies that were applied by Tibetan editors to organise huge and steadily growing manuscript and block print collections.