Abstract
This contribution explores a peculiar kind of annotation in Arabic multiple-text manuscripts. These manuscripts were often compiled as a personal ‘one-volume library’, containing copies and excerpts of a unique selection of texts. Further, they were often used for less guided writing activities. The owners left notes, lists and sometimes even sketches in the margins or on blank pages between the texts. Among these, lists of life dates of relatives are a valuable source for studies on domestic devotion. On the one hand, they give glimpses on the composition of households. How many people lived together and who were they? These lists inform us about names regardless of gender. On the other hand, the penning of these list is in itself a trace of a practice intricately tied to the familial and domestic spheres. These lists are usually the only place, in which the memory of those people is preserved.
Highlights
Among the Daiber collection in Tokyo, there is a nondescript manuscript of 92 folios measuring16.5 × 21.2 cm
They were the product of one textual engagement during which a more or less deliberate selection of texts was penned and compiled to function as a “one-volume library” (=multiple-text manuscripts, short MTMs)
Gerhard Endress describes majmū’as as “the least formal genre of books among the familiar types of collecting and organizing knowledge in medieval manuscripts”2 : “Not complete works or “best of” collections, nor corpus sets, are united in such volumes, but treasure troves resulting from months, or even years, of activity.3 ” And these characteristics would be kept during the early modern period and beyond, as well. Depending on their context of production, MTMs often constitute entirely unique compilations of materials, notes and even sketches which in themselves already hint at a devotional component in engagements with the written word. This is true for MS Daiber II 146 which contains eight different textual units, as well as a list of life dates of life dates of, assumedly, relatives of the former owner
Summary
Among the Daiber collection in Tokyo, there is a nondescript manuscript of 92 folios measuring. Gerhard Endress describes majmū’as as “the least formal genre of books among the familiar types of collecting and organizing knowledge in medieval manuscripts”2 : “Not complete works or “best of” collections, nor corpus sets (the Organon of logic, described above, is not a typical instance), are united in such volumes, but treasure troves resulting from months, or even years, of activity.3 ” And these characteristics would be kept during the early modern period and beyond, as well Depending on their context of production, MTMs often constitute entirely unique compilations of materials, notes and even sketches which in themselves already hint at a devotional component in engagements with the written word. In contrast to the highly public nature of most large-scale biographical collections concerned with the pillars of community, those humble lists were concerned with the realm of family and with relations built and formed to a large degree in the domestic sphere
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