Saleroom Fiction versus Provenance

Abstract

This article examines a group of twelve fragments in different languages and different scripts previously held in the Schøyen collection in London and Oslo. After they first emerged on the market in 1993, these fragments received colourful hypothetical and/or fictional pseudo-provenances. However, a consideration of the material logic of these parchment fragments (including folding lines and sewing holes) as well as an examination of the Arabic marginal manuscript notes they carry allows us to re-establish their historical trajectory from the seventh/thirteenth century onwards. At this point, they became part of Muslim Damascene manuscript culture and were reused as wrappers for small booklets in the scholarly field of ḥadīth. In the late ninth/fifteenth century, these booklets were subjected to a massive binding project and the fragments went into new large volumes. This article thus suggests approaches to use provenance research in order to re-historicize decontextualized fragments in modern collections.