![]() ![]() Studying manuscripts also has the advantage of opening new windows into pre-modern Middle Eastern society and culture itself, since medieval Cairo, Baghdad, Samarkand, and elsewhere were worlds very much defined by their manuscripts. The future of studying Middle Eastern history leads through fresh enquiry into the sources, and teaching techniques to study the old books are required to guide students on their way. Some disparities between original manuscripts and modern printings will not be radical, and some modern editors were very careful to produce good editions, but researchers who rely on nuances of text to develop interpretations about the past will benefit from visiting the old manuscript depositories. When we quote authors from the past we are accordingly several steps removed from what they wrote, and our printed Arabic texts are thus prime examples of books which cannot be judged definitively by their contents. An edition of an Arabic classic today therefore may or may not reflect the text preserved in its manuscripts, and those manuscripts in turn may or may not accurately reflect the original author’s intentions, either. However, these modern editions were quite often produced without careful consultation of the full range of the source manuscripts. Today, manuscripts are seldom read: the old books have been reproduced in printed editions, many now digitised and readily Internet-searchable. ![]() One of the greatest challenges to aspiring Arabic knowledge-seekers is the potential disconnect between the old manuscripts and the resources we now use to study classical Arabic culture and Islam. Ibn Nubāta’s "Pasturing at the Wellsprings of Knowledge," replete with notes left by past generations of owners (for more, see Mouse&Manuscript Lesson 21) ![]() A reader needs to navigate the faults, some little and some big, to help interpret these books. These manuscripts contain the outpouring of knowledge for which Muslim societies are justifiably proud, but since all manuscripts were copied by hand, and since erring is one of humanity’s core traits, any given manuscript is necessarily some parts knowledge, and other parts error. Their legacy is millions of manuscripts now stored in libraries, museums, and family collections around the world. Before printing presses were established in the Middle East around the mid-nineteenth century, manuscript-makers had been copying books prodigiously since the early Middle Ages. Muslim societies from Timbuktu to Transoxiana were avowed bibliophiles, and writing books was a major and signature component of their cultural production. This wrinkle puts a particular challenge to those wishing to deepen their understanding of Muslim culture and history. But what they don’t tell us is that sometimes we cannot even judge a book by its contents. She says that “the armored snail fighting the armored knight is a reminder of the inevitability of death,” a sentiment captured in Psalm 58 of the Bible: “ Like a snail that melteth away into slime, they shall be taken away like a dead-born child, they shall not see the sun.We have all heard the sound advice that we cannot judge a book by its cover. Silly knight, it’s just a snail!”įor Digital Medievalist, Lisa Spangenberg floated another idea. The valiant snails could be a commentary on social oppression, or it could just be medieval humor, says Got Medieval: “We’re supposed to laugh at the idea of a knight being afraid of attacking such a ‘heavily armored’ opponent. The British Library says that the scene could represent the Resurrection, or it could be a stand-in for the Lombards, “a group vilified in the early Middle Ages for treasonous behaviour, the sin of usury, and ‘non-chivalrous comportment in general.’” No one knows what, exactly, the scenes really mean. Photo: Brunetto Latini’s Li Livres dou Tresor, c. “But the ubiquity of these depictions doesn’t make them any less strange,” says the British Library, rounding up a number of examples of the slimy battles. Usually, the knight is drawn so that he looks worried, stunned, or shocked by his tiny foe.Įpic snail-on-knight combat showed up as often in medieval manuscripts as Kilroy across Europe. Sometimes the snail is all the way across the page, sometimes right under the knight’s foot. Sometimes the snail is monstrous, sometimes tiny. They’re everywhere! Sometimes the knight is mounted, sometimes not. As Got Medieval writes, “You get these all the time in the margins of Gothic manuscripts.”Īnd I do mean all the time. It’s a great unsolved mystery of medieval manuscripts. And scattered through this marginalia is an oddly recurring scene: a brave knight in shining armor facing down a snail. It’s common to find, in the blank spaces of 13th- and 14th-century English texts, sketches and notes from medieval readers. ![]()
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