The Birth of a Successful Prayer Book

Abstract

The vast project to reconstruct a history and geography of the spread of the Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt necessarily involves looking into the beginnings of the prayerbook’s manuscript transmission. Composed in Morocco before 869/1465, the prayerbook was already known in the Eastern Maghreb from the mid-11th/17th century. It then reached Turkey and the rest of the Mashriq. After that it found its way to Central, South and Southeast Asia. Returning to the core of the book’s diffusion, this article questions the existence of an autograph copy of Dalāʾil al-Khayrāt. How was the manuscript tradition of one of the most copied religious books in pre-modern times established? This article also poses essential questions about the work of the actors (copyists, illuminators) responsible for the diffusion of the book in its early days.