The Last Decades of Arabic Manuscript Culture (1870–1930): Coexistence and Interaction with Printing (B05)

• Subject Area: Islamic Studies, Arabian Studies, Semitic Studies
• Term: from 2011 to 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 181924784

Although printing in Arabic flourished from 1870 onwards, Islamic manuscripts in this language continued to be created by hand until c. 1930. This project investigates how Arabic manuscript culture was adapted to these radically changing conditions. A corpus of approximately 340 manuscripts from German libraries will be compared to works from the preceding era of manuscript production (1820–1870) and contemporary printed works (1870–1930). Among other things, this comparison is likely to shed some light on the specific strengths of manuscripts in relation to printing – strengths that have been lost (for the time being).

• DFG Programme: Collaborative Research Centres
• Subproject of: SFB 950: Collaborative Research Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures
• Applicant Institution: Universität Hamburg
• Co-Applicant Institution: Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena
• Project Head: Professor Dr. Tilman Seidensticker