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. My doctoral research was focused on a topic in the history of Arabic philosophy. I’m currently a research assistant in the ERC project MAJLIS: The Transformation of Jewish Literature in Arabic in the Islamicate World (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität, Munich). Previously, I have worked for the Arabic and Latin Glossary (Julius-Maximilians-Universität, Würzburg). My areas of interest include intellectual history in the Near and Middle East, book history, manuscript studies, provenance research, and science communication.
To contact me, send an email to tarraspeter[at]gmail[dot]com.
You can follow my research on academia.edu, X, 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: tarraspeter[at]gmail[dot]com
ISSN: 2943-5676