In its pursuit of establishing an academic tradition that aims at exploring untrodden, neglected areas in Arabic/Islamic heritage, the Manuscript Center of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina will be holding its third international conference on commentary manuscripts in March 2006. The conference represents one step further along the way of reconstructing our knowledge and awareness of Arabic/Islamic manuscript heritage.
Conference Themes
The conference generally revolves around the nature of commentary manuscripts, their significance, forms, and much more. The main themes can be summarized as follows:
• First, the nature of our conception of text and our concomitant evaluative practice of classifying these texts into high and low degrees of authorship.
• Second, the influence of commentary manuscripts on the propagation of knowledge in Islam by keeping alive the main texts, mut?n, through the different processes and levels of ?arh.
• Third, commentary manuscripts have their material and form-related peculiarities: commentaries may circumscribe the main text; they may appear as footnotes; they may even be written in different ink color.
• Fourth, studying atypical forms of commentary manuscripts and the various approaches to commenting on mut?n.
• Fifth, exhibiting and exploring samples of commentary manuscripts from the voluminous to the scrap-like (inserts).
Evidently, the conference is an endeavor to explore, encompass and understand the rich realm of commentary manuscripts within the framework of Islamic/Arabic heritage: a heritage that extends over time with a peculiar fashion of dynamic complementarity, resulting in that chirographic and documented culture – the Arabic/Islamic culture.
For more information visit: http://www.manuscriptcenter.org/commentary/about.asp
Click here for program
Click here for list of participants
(Please note that the program may be changed)