Article

The Colophon in Arabic Manuscripts. A Phenomenon without a Name

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Abstract

The oldest books in the Arabic language bearing a date of completion, which is the most simple form of colophon, originate from the third century of the Islamic era (ninth century ad). The scribes initially confined themselves to a few notes, such as the date, their names and their place of work. However, in the course of time they began to add further information, such as the title of the book and the name of the author, or else they briefly described the original model they had just copied and embellished the colophon with eulogies. Before long, the mode of expression became stereotyped. Later, and to a lesser extent, the layout was designed using certain characteristic forms. Although a large number of colophons occur in Arabic manuscripts, no technical term denoting them existed in the manuscript age. The existence of the colophon as a separate part of the book seems not even to have been recognized, for at that time the handbooks concerning the proper way of learning and the handling and copying of books fail to mention it at all. Only with the recent emergence of Arab codicology has the colophon been acknowledged and given an Arabic name. In contrast to this, however, the scholars of the manuscript age did pay considerable attention in the early days to the collation of the copy, comparing it with the original model and coining special terminology to describe the process.

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... 318-321; Gacek 2009, pp. 71-76;Quiring-Zoche 2013;Seşen 1997; Piemontese 1986. 48 This is a characteristic proper of Qurʾān colophons, as well as the use of abbreviations, as the letter mīm ‫م(‬ = tamma, thus is, it finishes) and hāʾ ‫ه(‬ = intahà, thus is, it finishes) which also have a decorative function. ...
... This is not the place for a full discussion of the use of the colophon in Arabic, which dates back at least to the ninth century. 60 It usually takes the following form: 'I the humble scribe Paul, son of Simon, completed the copying of this manuscript in Mosul with 57 For a good example, see Ralf Elger and Yavuz Köse (eds.), Many Ways of Speaking about the help of God in 1687'. ...
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