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Hosted by: Kislak Center
When we think about manuscript research, we think about the discoverability of text, codicology, art, and material culture, but above all, we expect to find what we are looking for by numbers, by descriptive terms, and by names.
In this talk, I will discuss some issues surrounding personal names in manuscripts from the Islamicate world, how names relate to personal identities, and the significance of this work for manuscript research. Moreover, I will introduce methodologies and best practices established for creating authority files in memory institutions of the Global North, allude to their origin and context, and draw a comparison to an alternative practice from the Global South. I will discuss how technology, and in particular Digital Humanities approaches, may both facilitate this work and at the same time raise new questions for the researcher/ librarian working with manuscripts regardless of their origin. This will be based on my involvement with FIHRIST, the online union catalog of manuscripts from the Islamicate world for the UK.
Recognizing the intellectual value of authority work and the substantial efforts to pursue it at scale has introduced new approaches beyond technology and method, highlighting the impact of human collaboration.
The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies Online Lecture Series presents regularly scheduled lectures related to the study of premodern manuscript books and global manuscript culture.
Yasmin Faghihi is Head of the Near and Middle Eastern Department at Cambridge University Library. She is the editor of FIHRIST, the online union catalog for manuscripts from the Islamicate world, and chairs the Board of Directors. She is a leader in using and promoting standardized practices in text encoding for manuscript description and teaching to foster awareness about compatible approaches to data creation and use. Her work with the Middle Eastern and African manuscript collections has evolved around Islamic codicology including papermaking and distribution and the history of collections and collecting. Her Digital Humanities interests focus on the exchange of knowledge both as a historical and contemporary phenomenon, and how DH methodologies can impact the recognition of cultural diversity and offer new approaches to analyzing cross-disciplinary frameworks.
Featured Image: A colophon from the autograph manuscript and one of the three copies of the Durr al-buḥūr (Jewels of the Seas), composed and written by J.L. Burckhardt during his residence in Aleppo in the year 1810 (Cambridge University Library, Qq. 68, fol. 61r).