Kairouan Manuscript Cultures / Cultures des manuscrits à Kairouan

Edited by Jonathan E. Brockopp and Asma Helali

“This collaborative work offers a valuable and timely exploration of the renowned Kairouan manuscript collection. Structured in three parts, it first examines the celebrated Qur'anic manuscripts, then the significant corpus of legal texts, and finally lesser-known collections and archival holdings. Through a resolutely multidisciplinary approach and the use of new technologies, it renews research perspectives and opens promising avenues for the study and promotion of this exceptional manuscript heritage.

 

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The National Laboratory for the Preservation and Conservation of Parchment and Manuscripts in Raqqada, Tunisia, houses what may be the oldest near-intact collection of Islamic manuscripts in the world, with dozens of manuscripts dated before 900 CE. Known as the Kairouan Collection, these manuscripts present a unique subject for academic inquiry. Scholars have unusually solid evidence of its contents and use over the past thousand years both from notes written by the community of scholars in early Kairouan, Tunisia, and from records of nineteenth- and twentieth-century colonial representatives seeking “specimens” for exotic collections in Europe.

Kairouan Manuscript Cultures is the first book to focus on the full breadth of the Kairouan Collection within its historical context. Highlighting three current trends in Maghribi manuscript scholarship—Qur’ānic manuscripts, legal texts, and the history of the Kairouan Collection—this volume brings together various scholarly approaches, including paleography, codicology, biocodicology, textual analysis, and history, to shed new light on these important manuscripts and to raise the profile of the Tunisian scholars who specialize in these texts.

In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume include Arianna D’Ottone, Moez Dridi, Afef Hannechi, Nejmeddine Hentati, Khaled Kchir, Miklos Muranyi, Manel Rammah, Kristine Rose-Beers, and Clément Salah.

“This collaborative work offers a valuable and timely exploration of the renowned Kairouan manuscript collection. Structured in three parts, it first examines the celebrated Qur'anic manuscripts, then the significant corpus of legal texts, and finally lesser-known collections and archival holdings. Through a resolutely multidisciplinary approach and the use of new technologies, it renews research perspectives and opens promising avenues for the study and promotion of this exceptional manuscript heritage.
Cet ouvrage collectif propose une exploration précieuse et opportune du célèbre fonds des manuscrits de Kairouan. Structuré en trois parties, il examine d’abord les célèbres manuscrits coraniques, puis l’important corpus de textes juridiques, et enfin des collections moins connues et des fonds d’archives. Grâce à une approche résolument pluridisciplinaire et au recours à des technologies nouvelles, il renouvelle les perspectives de recherche et ouvre des pistes prometteuses pour l’étude et la valorisation de ce patrimoine manuscrit exceptionnel.”—Elise Voguet, coeditor of Terroirs d’al-Andalus et du Maghreb VIII-XVe siècles : peuplements, ressources et sainteté

Jonathan E. Brockopp is Professor of History, Religious Studies, and Philosophy at the Pennsylvania State University. He is the author of Muhammad’s Heirs: The Rise of Muslim Scholarly Communities, 622–950 and Early Mālikī Law: Ibn ‘Abd al-Hakam and His Major Compendium of Jurisprudence.

Asma Helali is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Lille. She is the author of The Sanaa Palimpsest: The Transmission of the Qur’an in the First Centuries AH and coeditor of The Making of Religious Texts in Islam: The Fragment and the Whole.