This blog is dedicated to the dispersed manuscript heritage of St Catherine’s Monastery at Mount Sinai, Egypt. The library of this ancient monastery hosts one of the world’s most important manuscript collections with over 4,500 items in more than a dozen languages. The dispersed manuscripts left the monastery mostly in the 19th century. The importance of these mostly fragmentary handwritten artefacts lies in the fact that often only through them the exact codicological and textual features of Sinaitic manuscripts can be determined. But they are also part of the history of the Sinai library as a whole.
This website collects notes on dispersed Sinaitic manuscripts, their collectors, and their former and present holding institutions. This is deliberately done in the form of public scholarship, which is interested in getting exchange started on this topic beyond the university. This website wants to provide information about networks of dealers, collectors, scholars, and public institutions involved in the dispersion of Sinaitic manuscripts. For this purpose three continually updated resource pages are hosted: Manuscripts, Collectors and Dealers, Bibliography.

My name is Peter Tarras (ORCiD: 0009-0009-1776-3171). I studied Philosophy, Islamic Studies, and Near and Middle Eastern Studies in Kiel, Munich and Sheffield. In 2024, I completed my PhD in Philosophy and Judaic Studies. I’m currently a post-doctoral researcher in the ERC project “MAJLIS: The Transformation of Jewish Literature in Arabic in the Islamicate World“. Previously, I have worked in two DFG projects based at the University of Würzburg, the “Arabic and Latin Glossary“, and the “Arabic and Latin Corpus“. I research pre-modern manuscript traditions, primarily in Arabic and especially of Christian and Jewish communities of the Islamic world, from the perspectives of book history, institutional history, and intellectual history. I’m particularly interested in scribal culture, materiality, and textual practices as well as the emergence of manuscript collections. In addition, my research has a strong focus on provenance and the present-day significance of cultural heritage objects. I’m also an academic blogger and committed to communicating research in non-academic contexts. Apart from “Membra Dispersa Sinaitica”, I’m responsible as an editor for the “Biblia Arabica Blog“, and the “Munich Research Centre for Jewish Arabic Cultures Blog” and “Newsletter“.
If you would like to be added to the MEDISI mailing list or contact me, please send an email to membradispersasinaitica[at]gmail[dot]com.
You can follow my research on Knowledge Commons and Bluesky.
Impressum
Informationen gemäß § 5 Telemediengesetz
Peter Tarras
Institut für den Nahen und Mittleren Osten
Veterinärstr. 1
80539 München
Telefon: +49-89-2180-1879
Email: membradispersasinaitica[at]gmail[dot]com
ISSN: 2943-5676