Posts

Introducing Our Survey of Digital Workflows Project

  • 4 min read

Something one often hears in the context of introductions to or apologetics for digital humanities is the idea that all scholars today are in some degree or another “digital humanists.” And while it sounds at this point a bit cliché, it is in fact true: just about everyone who works…

Read More

Digital Islamicate Manuscripts Reading/Working Group 2.0: Spring 2024

  • 4 min read

After a fall semester of readings and often lively discussion of recent literature in the history of Arabic-script manuscripts, ranging from the life-histories of Qur’anic codices to the transition from manuscript to print, for the upcoming spring semester we’re going to take a somewhat different tack, leaning much more heavily…

Read More

On Data Production and Digitized Manuscripts: Some Exploratory Thoughts

  • 13 min read

From such a starting point, we can then ask: how exactly should we think about electronic texts, about bodies of data, derived from digitized manuscripts? What special concerns, limitations, and possibilities might such a corpus hold vis-à-vis other forms of textual corpora? How do the affordances and informational deposits internal to manuscripts qua manuscripts translate, or not translate, into ‘datafied’ electronic formats? How might quantifiable, computational methods work within such a corpus? What is gained in such a scenario, and what is potentially lost? How can gains be amplified, and losses mitigated, or at least registered?

Read More

Traces of the Other: Encounter and Presence in Manuscript Studies

  • 10 min read

As one of the main components of my work as part of the OpenITI team I spend a great deal of time every day interacting with digitized Islamicate manuscripts: Arabic, Persian, Ottoman Turkish, along with a scattering of other languages, vernacular tongues that began to be written down in earnest…

Read More

Shajara-i Turk: A 17th-century Turko-Chinggisid Genealogy from Central Asia

  • 8 min read

We continue our series of guest posts by our summer paleography and codicology course students this week with an exploration by Nurlan Kabdylkhak of the manuscript tradition of an important component text of Central Asian Islamicate literature.

Shajara-i Turk stands out among historical chronicles originating in Central Asia for several compelling…

Read More