Four manuscripts from the Mālikī tradition: NLPCPM, Raqqada, 49-2/915
By Jonathan Brockopp One of the amazing things about the Kairouan collection of manuscripts is that we can identify the handwriting of specific scribes. Local caretakers have known this for generations, but Miklos Muranyi was the first to publish this…
One of the amazing things about the Kairouan collection of manuscripts is that we can identify the handwriting of specific scribes. Local caretakers have known this for generations, but Miklos Muranyi was the first to publish this fact, noting the many manuscripts written by local historian and legal scholar Abu l-ʿArab al-Tamīmī (d. 333/944).[1] Scribes of Arabic manuscripts occasionally identify themselves, but the presence of so many manuscripts from the pen of a scholar who was active in the late third/ninth and early fourth/tenth century is unique.
Unlike most collections, the Kairouan manuscripts have remained intact for at least the past 900 years. In this sense, this collection is very different from libraries in Europe, which collect manuscripts from all over the world. A number of important Mālikī manuscripts are now in Dublin, for example, collected by the American mining magnate Chester Beatty (d. 1968). They sit today alongside Qurʾān manuscripts from Egypt, palm leaf manuscripts from South Asia, and Chinese scrolls. The conservation department upholds the highest standards, and the manuscripts receive careful attention, but some of their history has been lost.
The National Laboratory for the Preservation and Conservation of Parchment and Manuscripts (NLPCPM) in Raqqada, Kairouan, Tunisia, also contains a few recently collected pieces, including fifty papyri collected in the twentieth century by Tunisian scholar Ḥasan Ḥusnī ʿAbd al-Wahhāb (d. 1968). But the heart of the collection there, known as the "ancient library (al-maktaba al-ʿatīqa), is the fruit of generations of scholars from the period of Kairouan's flourishing, roughly the third/ninth to sixth/twelfth centuries.
Abu l-ʿArab lived and taught in Kairouan during this golden era; he copied many books and wrote several of his own, and it seems that he or his heirs donated much of his personal library to the collection of the Sīdī ʿUqba mosque in the center of town. His compact script is neat and efficient. In their recent article, Umberto Bongionino and Clément Salah described some of the unique features of his handwriting as follows:
Here, the initial kāf is traced as a semicircle topped by a diagonal stroke, and in final position, as a lām whose bowl does not plunge below the base line, and whose straight stem is only occasionally topped by a diagonal stroke. The body of ṣād, ḍād, ṭāʾ, and ẓāʾ is oval, compact, and in the case of ṭāʾ and ẓāʾ it is often traced in one single stoke together with the stem. The qalam used by Abū l-ʿArab was nibbed as a blunt point, which gave the letters a uniform thickness, and the stems of alif, ṭāʾ, ẓāʾ, final kāf, and lām do not present any serifs. Tails and bowls are short and rounded, elongations are rare, and the script has a compact, almost crammed appearance.[2]
Abū l-ʿArab's compact script facilitates an efficient use of expensive parchment and is common for other scribes from the period. This is one of the reasons that I found the handwriting of the manuscript known as Raqqada, 49-2/915 surprising. I first encountered this manuscript in 1996, when I obtained permission to look for manuscripts of works by ʿAbd Allāh b. ʿAbd al-Ḥakam (d. 214/829), one of the Egyptian students of Mālik b. Anas (d. 179/795).[3] Quite in contrast to Abu l-ʿArab's neat, squarish letters, the handwriting on this manuscript was almost florid, with extended pen strokes and an unusual way of writing certain letters.
Because the national laboratory has no reading room, I usually worked on the manuscripts in the Zāwiya of Sīdī ʿAbīd with local expert Shaykh Ṣādiq Mālik al-Gharyānī in Kairouan. In the spring of 2000, we worked by the natural light of the room, with the late Shaykh at a small desk near the window and me at another desk nearby. At one point, I discovered that 49-2/915 looked very much like a manuscript I had been reading a few days earlier, and I was able to conclude that the fragments derived from Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam's Minor Compendium, a book known to the historical sources but thought to be lost.[4] The Shaykh, excited by my discovery, took the parchment and proceeded to write the correct title on the manuscript itself in pencil. To me, these documents had value because of what they could tell us about centuries past, but to the Shaykh they were part of his living heritage, and he was simply continuing the tradition of scholars writing notes in the margins of the manuscript.
Still today, the Shaykh's marks on this and other manuscripts are visible as he underlined names and other key details in his attempt to identify loose parchment pages. I should also add that even for the Shaykh, writing on a manuscript was an extraordinary occasion. Most of his notes were placed on separate sheets of paper with which he wrapped the fragments. On a few occasions, he invited me to write notes on these sheets as well, and so my rectilinear schoolboyish Arabic handwriting has now become part of the collection.
I must admit that the thrill of discovery clouded my judgment somewhat. Having found two fragments of this lost text, I was convinced that the rest of the manuscript was to be found in the collection, somewhere. The unusual script, together with the rough, heavy parchment, made me certain that I could easily identify the remaining pages, if only I could have access to more of the collection.
In the summer of 2022, I received the necessary permission to survey several boxes of parchment in the collection;[5] many of these were now conserved between museum-grade acrylic sheets. I ignored the easily identified texts, such as the Mudawwana of Saḥnūn b. Saʿīd (d. 240/854), and focused on the unidentified texts, but I never did find the additional pages of Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam's Minor Compendium.
Much of the Kairouan collection is now digitized, though these images are not publicly available, and as I was scrolling through them, it struck me that a pattern recognition program could do my work far more efficiently. Indeed, using digital images whenever possible prevents the inevitable damage that results from even the most careful human handling.
Still, I cannot help but feel that something essential is lost in this digital access. I was extraordinarily privileged to have had the opportunity twenty-five years ago to touch the very parchment that Abu l-ʿArab and his colleagues had used more than a thousand years earlier, and to have had the great benefit of working with Shaykh al-Gharyānī, one of the living heirs of the Kairouan scholarly community.
Notes:
[1] See, for examples, Miklos Muranyi, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Ḥadīt und Rechtsgelehrsamkeit der Mālikiyya in Nordafrika bis zum 5. Jh. d.H. (Harrassowitz, 1997), 122 and 203. See also Werner Schwartz, "Die Bibliothek der grossen Moschee von al-Qayrawān, Tunesien. Vorarbeiten zu ihrer Geschichte" (master's thesis, Fachhochschule für Bibliotheks- und Dokumentationswesen, 1986), 11.
[2] Umberto Bongianino and Clément Salah, "The Earliest Manuscripts of Kairouan (9th–11th Centuries): New Approaches for a More Accurate Dating." Arabica 71 (2024): 275.
[3] My thanks to the Fulbright commission, the Centre d'Études Maghrébines à Tunis, and Dr. Mourad Rammah for facilitating my research and allowing me to photograph this manuscript.
[4] Jonathan Brockopp, "The Minor Compendium of Ibn ʿAbd al-Ḥakam (d. 214/829) and Its Reception in the Early Mālikī School," Islamic Law and Society 12, no. 2 (2005): 149-81.
[5] My thanks to Dr. Faouzi Mahfoudh, then director of the National Institute of Heritage, and Ṣāliḥ al-Mahdī ben Hammouda, then interim director of the NLPCPM, for giving me this permission.
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