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Script and writing were among the most important inventions in
human history, and until the invention of printing, the handwritten
book was the primary medium of literary and cultural transmission.
Although the study of manuscripts is already quite advanced for
many regions of the world, no unified discipline of 'manuscript
studies' has yet evolved which is capable of treating handwritten
books from East Asia, India and the Islamic world equally alongside
the European manuscript tradition. This book, which aims to begin
the interdisciplinary dialogue needed to arrive at a truly
systematic and comparative approach to manuscript cultures
worldwide, brings together papers by leading researchers concerned
with material, philological and cultural aspects of different
manuscript traditions.
Manuscript cultures based on Arabic script feature various
tendencies in standardisation of orthography, script types and
layout. Unlike previous studies, this book steps outside
disciplinary and regional boundaries and provides a typological
cross-cultural comparison of standardisation processes in twelve
Arabic-influenced writing traditions where different cultures,
languages and scripts interact. A wide range of case studies give
insights into the factors behind uniformity and variation in
Judeo-Arabic in Hebrew script, South Palestinian Christian Arabic,
New Persian, Aljamiado of the Spanish Moriscos, Ottoman Turkish, a
single multilingual Ottoman manuscript, Sino-Arabic in northwest
China, Malay Jawi in the Moluccas, Kanuri and Hausa in Nigeria,
Kabyle in Algeria, and Ethiopian Fidal script as used to
transliterate Arabic. One of the findings of this volume is that
different domains of manuscript cultures have distinct paths of
standardisation, so that orthography tends to develop its own
standardisation principles irrespective of norms applied to layout
and script types. This book will appeal to readers interested in
manuscript studies, sociolinguistics, literacy studies, and history
of writing.
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