Scribal Practice and the Global Cultures of Colophons, 1400–1800

Stefan Hanss is Senior Lecturer in Early Modern History at The University of Manchester, UK, and the winner of a British Academy Rising Star Engagement Award and a Philip Leverhulme Prize. Hanss works on cultural encounters and global material culture. His research has been widely published, including in Current Anthropology, History Workshop Journal, Past & Present, Renaissance Quarterly and The Historical Journal. Christopher D. Bahl is Assistant Professor in South Asian History at Durham University, UK. He is interested in the social, cultural and political histories of the early modern western Indian Ocean world and studies those through the surviving manuscript cultures of the region.

1. Information, Interpretation, Interaction: Global Cultures of Colophons, c. 1400-1800- Christopher D. Bahl and Stefan Hanß.- 2. A Prosopography in Circulation: Advertising Scribal Travails in Arabic Manuscripts across Early Modern South Asia- Christopher D. Bahl.- 3. Lines of Loyalties and Early Modern Cultural Diversity: Colophons as Sites of Encounters- Stefan Hanß.- 4. How to Publish a Book in the Fifteenth-Century Middle East: The Case of Ibn Na s ir al-Di n's "Abundant Refutation"- Laurenz Kern.-5. Signatures of Authority: Colophons in Seventeenth-Century Melkite Circles in Aleppo- Feras Krimsti.- 6. The Making of a Local Historian in Timbuktu: The Signed Marginalia Attributed to Mahmud Ka'ti in the Fondo Kati Collection- Susana Molins Lliteras.- 7. From Scribal Marks to Calligraphic Signatures? Print, Scribe and Script in Early Modern European Writing Manuals- Hannah Murphy.- 8. Poetry of the Scribes: Versified Colophons and Scribal Identity in Siamese Manuscript Culture- Peera Panarut.- 9. Muslim Scribal Culture in India around 1800: Toward a Disentangling of the Mughal Library and the Delhi Collection- Nur Sobers-Khan.- 10. In Absence of a Colophon: Alternative Signing Practices in Arabic Autograph Manuscripts- Torsten Wollina.- 11. Remembering the Living and the Dead in Fifteenth-Century Armenian Colophons: The Case of Bodleian MS Marsh 438 (I-III)- David Zakarian.

"This volume is a welcome addition for the growing community of scholars interested in textual materialities and comparative book history. ...  this review shall point out some critical perspectives from which readers can engage with this innovative and thought-provoking collection." (Hwisang Cho, Journal of Early Modern History, Vol. 27 (4), 2023)

"Scribal practice is a welcome reminder that every part of a written text is potentially significant, and that even little-known texts can open unexpected windows on the past and present." (Deborah Rudolph, EAPS, East Asian Publishing and Society, Vol. 13, 2023)