The Development of Arabic Multiple-Text and Composite Manuscripts: The Case of ḥadīth Manuscripts in Damascus during the Late Medieval Period

Abstract

This article is based on documented book collections in pre-Ottoman Syria and focuses in particular on a corpus of Arabic ḥadīth manuscripts produced between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. These manuscripts came mostly in the format of composite manuscripts, but occasionally also as multiple-text manuscripts. Many of them had originally been stand-alone booklets that were subsequently transformed into larger codices. This article shows how changes in the social and intellectual profile of a scholarly field (here ḥadīth studies) changes the materiality of the books the scholars used. The article furthermore argues that the term ‘majmūʿ’ that contemporaries used for composite and multiple-text manuscripts is meaningful when we consider the manuscripts not as ‘production units’, but as ‘circulation units’.