A guest post by Habib Ibrahim* 1. While working on the Arabic dossier of James Intercisus,1 a Syrian-Persian saint of the 5th century, I came across a fragment in the Mingana Collection in Birmingham that belongs to an Arabic manuscript from Sinai. The single leaf preserved under the shelfmark Birmingham, Cadbury Research Library, Mingana Collection,… Continue reading Reuniting James Intercisus: A Mingana Leaf Rejoins Sinai Ar. 369
Category: Collectors
Andrea Scandar’s Manuscripts in the Vatican Library
1. Over the last few days, I have started preparing a presentation on the Maronite scholar Andrea Scandar of Cyprus (Indrāwus Skandar al-Qubrusī, d. 1748)1 for an upcoming conference in Munich organised by my colleague Dr Vevian Zaki and entitled ‘Once We Were Here: Traces of Mobility across the Ottoman Empire‘ (8-10 July 2025). Scandar… Continue reading Andrea Scandar’s Manuscripts in the Vatican Library
Initial Funding from LMU Munich
1. Today I got news that I will receive initial funding from my faculty at LMU Munich. I’m very grateful for this. It’s a comparatively small sum (around EUR 9,000). But it can already achieve quite a bit. I will use this funding to carry out preliminary work for a larger project dedicated to the… Continue reading Initial Funding from LMU Munich
Annual Report #2
1. This is the second annual report of the project Membra Dispersa Sinaitica (the first one can be found here). I mainly use these annual reports to reflect on what I have achieved with the project in the past year, what went well and what didn’t, and where the journey should go in the coming… Continue reading Annual Report #2
New Materials on Grote (Part 4)
1. This is the fourth post in a series in which I document new biographical material related to the collector Friedrich Grote (you can find the first three posts here, here, and here). Already for the second time I was unexpectedly approached by someone because they came across a source on Grote by coincidence. This… Continue reading New Materials on Grote (Part 4)
Miscellaneous Identifications III: A New Early Arabic Six-Books Dormition Fragment
1. This is the third post in a series in which I document identifications associated with the work of early Christian Arabic scribes (you can find the first two posts here and here). This post is about a fragment of the early Arabic translation of the so-called Six-Books Dormition of the Virgin (CANT 140), an… Continue reading Miscellaneous Identifications III: A New Early Arabic Six-Books Dormition Fragment
‘Don’t Feed the Antiquities Market!’ – An Interview with Roberta Mazza
1. Manuscripts have biographies, right up to the present day. And they still offer projection surfaces for the attribution of both material and immaterial values. Anyone working with manuscripts today cannot ignore these issues. We have also seen in recent years how the boundaries between those with scholarly and those with monetary interests in manuscripts… Continue reading ‘Don’t Feed the Antiquities Market!’ – An Interview with Roberta Mazza
New Materials on Grote (Part 3)
1. This is the third post in a series in which I document new biographical material related to the collector Friedrich Grote (you can find the first two posts here and here). This post is about two letters by Grote that Vincent Engelhardt (Leiden University) found in the Central Archive of the Berlin State Museums… Continue reading New Materials on Grote (Part 3)
New Materials on Grote (Part 2)
1. In July, I published a long article on the biography of the collector of Sinaitic manuscripts Friedrich Grote (1861-1922).1 Grote can be described as one of the most underestimated manuscript collectors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He played a central role in the dispersion of the handwritten cultural heritage of St… Continue reading New Materials on Grote (Part 2)
Miscellaneous Identifications II: The Christian Arabic Undertext of the Mingana-Lewis Palimpsest
1. This is the second post in a series in which I document identifications associated with the work of early Christian Arabic scribes (you can find the first post here). Quite inadvertently, the material that I would like to present in this post has even led to three and not just one identification: the identification… Continue reading Miscellaneous Identifications II: The Christian Arabic Undertext of the Mingana-Lewis Palimpsest