Ašʿarite theology
How a theological school born in the East became, in the Maghreb, the official doctrine of an empire — and what it actually said.
Teaching cycle
Manuscripts and philology
The workshop of critical editing
المخطوطات وتحقيق النصوص
A practical workshop: reading a Maghrebi hand, dating a copy, collating witnesses, establishing a text.
Course objectives
- Decipher the common Maghrebi and Andalusi hands.
- Identify codicological features: paper, ruling, colophon, audition certificates.
- Construct a stemma and justify the choice of a base witness.
- Write a legible and honest critical apparatus.
Syllabus
I. Reading
Maghrebi palaeography: ductus, ligatures, abbreviations, the usual pitfalls of copying.
II. Describing
Applied codicology: support, quires, watermarks, binding, marks of ownership and reading.
III. Collating
Establishing variants, distinguishing error from reading, understanding families of copies.
IV. Publishing
Editorial standards, apparatus of notes, indexes and introduction: making a book out of a manuscript.
Texts studied
- Manuscript collections of the al-Qarawiyyīn Library (reproductions)
- National Library of the Kingdom of Morocco — Kattānī collection
- Andalusi manuscripts held at the Escorial (reproductions)
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