Margins speak
Hidden voices from Christian Arabic manuscripts
This blog is dedicated to Arabic marginal notes in Christian Arabic manuscripts as well as in manuscripts written in other languages—traces left over the centuries by scribes, readers, owners, and others whose hidden voices still speak from the margins
Blog Posts
Hidden Correspondence
Imagine opening an old, torn book only to discover that someone once repaired it using strips of paper. These strips seem to have been cut from old letters. You begin to read them: one person asks another to pay his debts, while someone else offers praise and expresses a longing to see the recipient soon…
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The Art of Being Humble
Manuscript scribes introduced themselves with a series of humble expressions like: the sinner, the poor, the weak, and many more. Some of them became so creative with these expressions that, in a way, humility itself became an art form …
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When a Scribe Falls Asleep
One night in 1251 CE, a monk-scribe at St. Catherine’s Monastery in the Sinai Peninsula of Egypt, Nilus of Damascus, was copying a manuscript in his cell. Working late into the night, he fell asleep. When he woke up and resumed his work, he accidentally left a blank page and …
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Reversing a Curse, Blessing a Thief
In the quiet library of Saint Catherine’s Monastery at Sinai, Egypt rests a manuscript known as MS Sinai Arabic 441, which contains a collection of saints’ lives, homilies, and apocryphal works copied centuries…
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