Manuscript Treasures from Afro-Eurasia: Scribes, Patrons, Collectors, and Readers

Description

Throughout the Middle Ages manuscripts were routinely commissioned, copied, illustrated, displayed, read, and transferred across both sides of the Mediterranean. Their significance as vehicles for the transmission of visual and textual knowledge is well known. Less understood, particularly when it comes to non-Latin manuscripts, is the complex web of spiritual, material, intellectual, and emotional interactions that influenced their production and reception. The twelve essays presented here seek to address this gap by exploring the very direct relationships that existed between manuscripts and those individuals or communities that were involved in their making. The volume is broad in scope, covering written artefacts produced between Late Antiquity and the fifteenth century and presenting case studies that range from the British Isles to East Africa and from Spain and the Maghreb to Armenia. The visual and textual evidence preserved in these manuscripts is interpreted by drawing from disciplines such as palaeography, art history, codicology, and textual criticism. The result is a book that details the impact of makers, patrons, collectors, and readers on the making and circulation of manuscripts across Afro-Eurasia. Contents Preface Translations and the Exchange of Manuscripts among Eastern Christian Communities: Textual and Material Evidence from Anti-Chalcedonian Syriac Communities in Late Antiquity Mystic Contemplation of the Eusebian Canon Tables from Lindisfarne to Armenia Manuscript Illuminations and Mural Paintings: Medium Interactions in Christian Egypt Patrons, Donors and Workshops: The Making of a Syriac Lectionary Images of Christ Emmanuel and Christus Victor in British Library Add. 19548 The Vatican al-Ṣūfī and the Library of Abū al-Ḥasan ʿAlī al-Ghāfiqī al-Shārrī in Thirteenth-century Ceuta Imaging Sanctity in Early Solomonic Ethiopia: The Portrait of ‘Qǝddus’ ʾIyasus Moʾa Hebrew Book Art in Shared Spaces: Perpignan, c. 1300 The Ethiopian Royal Family as Commissioners of Manuscripts and the Artistic Style of the ‘Sad Eyes’ Amir P‘ōlin between Tabriz and the Erznka Christian Brotherhood: Reassessing the Importance of Manuscript V103 (1336 CE) and its Commissioner-Copyist The Ethiopian and Eritrean Orthodox Church in Jerusalem during the Early Solomonic Period: Evidence from Ethiopic Manuscripts ‘Spiritual Treasure in Five Languages’: Pentaglot Biblical Manuscripts from Egypt in a Global and Transregional Perspective Contributors Index of Written Artefacts