Commentary Manuscripts

In its pursuit of establishing an academic tradition that aims at exploring untrodden, neglected areas in Arabic/Islamic heritage, the Manuscript Center of the Bibliotheca Alexandrina will be holding its third international conference on commentary manuscripts in March 2006. The conference (together with the previous conferences held at the Center: Millenary Manuscripts 2004 and Signed Manuscripts 2005) represents one step further along the way of reconstructing our knowledge and awareness of Arabic/Islamic manuscript heritage. The previous conferences shed light on two aspects of Arabic/Islamic manuscripts scattered (or, concealed) in many libraries all over the world. In these conferences, we were keen on introducing Arabic/Islamic manuscripts to the public in an exhibition, conjuring up the image of that heritage for all to see. In so doing, we attempt at bridging the gap between our present culture and its historical roots.

In this conference, as in its predecessors, we propose a novel heritage concept – commentary manuscripts. The novelty of these concepts not only invigorates our perception of Arabic/Islamic heritage, but also opens up new avenues of investigation, research and understanding of that patrimony. Through these conferences, we try to introduce new approaches to the study of heritage: approaches that not only focus on the text and its routine processes (editing, cataloguing, collating, etc.), but also privilege the study of discourse.

First, we should consider the nature and limits of this new concept, then we may proceed to the main themes of the conference and its activities: the exhibition, conference papers, and the in-depth discussions of all the themes and topics related to commentary manuscripts.

Commentary Manuscripts Defined

It is commonly believed that šarh, or commentary, should be relegated to a secondary position after the commented upon matn or main text. According to this belief, šarh is nothing but a second best: a type of authorship that should be viewed as marginal and less prestigious. From this vantage point, hawāšī, commentaries upon previous commentaries, represent authorship of the third degree. As such, the author of a particular matn is the one who should be celebrated and lionized, for he is THE author (etymologically the word refers to an act of creation). If hawāšī are viewed as authorship of the third degree, ta‘līqāt or annotations should be granted a lesser grade of appreciation; the mu‘aliq is then a fourth degree author. Still down the rungs of the ladder, we come across another form of authorship, seen by many as the least important – tayyārāt or inserts. These are scraps of paper inserted inside the manuscript folios to serve as a bookmark, or a reminder, or as a nota bene on the text.

According to this rough taxonomy of the types of šarh, we have five degrees of authorship: the author of the main text (al-mu’alif), the commentator (al-šārih), the marginalia editor (al-muhašī), the annotator (al-mu‘aliq), and finally the insert or tayyārāt editor. It has been commonplace to think of authors of main texts as masters, the rest, of course, are mere humble followers. Based on this false apprehension, later centuries in Islamic history, with their characteristic decadence,  have been dubbed as "centuries of šurūh and hawāšī", while early centuries of Islamic civilization are dubbed, expectedly, "the first centuries of mutūn and innovation".  

In fact, the whole issue needs to be seriously revisited. We need to alter this pejorative conception of šarh as a secondary or marginal text. Šarh, an unfortunately embattled concept, has to be recuperated from its current state of misuse; we need to inculcate in the minds that in Arabic/Islamic heritage the latter is generally not necessarily less in quality than the former. On the contrary. Some commentaries are as equally important as their main texts. We only have to remember Nasīr al-Dīn al-Tūsī's commentaries on the mathematical and astronomical magna opera by Greek and Alexandrian scientists. He named his commentaries Tahrīrāt or revised editions in contemporary parlor. He wrote Tahrīr Ptolemy's al-Māgistī, Tahrīr Euclid's ’Usūl al-Handasa, Tahrīr Archemides' Kitāb al-’Ukar, and many others. His fourteen commentaries cannot be viewed as secondary or marginal texts: al-Tūsī was trying to reconstruct the whole body of classical science. His commentaries aimed at freeing (this is the literal meaning of tahrīr) those ancient texts from, according to him, their drawbacks. And as such, his commentaries are no less important than the main texts (mutūn) commented upon, and even may exceed them in importance.

Our argument, so far, focused on commentary manuscripts content-wise. Other form-related aspects of these manuscripts should also be studied: style of šarh, material form of manuscripts, decorative modes, et cetera. As to šarh, we can identify a number of types: fused šarh, Qāl-Aqūl-type  šarh, summative šarh, tafāsīr, books on gharīb of the Koran and Hadith, typical and atypical commentaries on poetical works, and many other different types of commentary manuscripts which will be handled in more elaborate detail during the conference proceedings.

Conference Themes

The conference generally revolves around the nature of commentary manuscripts, their significance, forms, et cetera. The main themes can be summarized as follows:

·    First, the nature of our conception of text and our concomitant evaluative practice of classifying these texts into high and low degrees of authorship. This includes categorizing these texts into mutūn, šurūh, hawāšī, ta‘līqāt, et cetera. Unraveling a number of šarh-related concepts such as tafsīr, tašrīh, ta’wīl, istidrāk: the difference among Šarh Tašrīh al-Qānūn by Ibn al-Nafīs; Tašrīh al- Aflāk by al-‘Āmilī; Tafsīr al-Jalālayn; and Kitāb al-Tafsira is also worth noting.

·    Second, the influence of commentary manuscripts on the propagation of knowledge in Islam by keeping alive the main texts, mutūn, through the different processes and levels of šarh. Interestingly, some commentaries gained wide circulation during a particular period of time, a case in point is the many  commentaries on Fusūl Abū-Qrāt (Hippocrates) in the seventh and eighth centuries of Hegira.

·    Third, commentary manuscripts have their material and form-related peculiarities: commentaries may circumscribe the main text; they may appear as footnotes; they may even be written in different ink colour. Furthermore, they may be embedded within the main text, or they may be written separately (some commentaries themselves occupy several tomes such as Hāšiyat Ibn‘ Abbdīn).

·    Fourth, studying atypical forms of commentary manuscripts and the various approaches to commenting on mutūn. Of such forms we may mention the commentary collection: it represents a type of an anthology of commentaries extracted from various resources as a new commentary. Adding critical notes relevant to the main text is also one of these types, e.g. al-Mughnī ‘an Haml al-Asfār fī Takhrīj mā fī al-Ihyā’ min al-Akhbār by al-‘Iraqī.

·    Fifth, exhibiting and exploring samples of commentary manuscripts from the voluminous to the scrap-like (inserts). Viewing commentaries from a comparative vantage point: the notion of commentary itself among different cultures, ancient and modern, its manifestations, cultural significance, universal bearing are all research-worthy. Examples of such cross-cultural perspectives abound: Islamic tafsīr and European hermeneutics; Jewish kabalistic interpretation of the Old Testament and Islamic hisāb al-jummal (gematria); the borrowing of foreign technical words to explain or refer to scientific concepts, especially in natural sciences.

Evidently, the conference is an endeavor to explore, encompass and understand the rich realm of commentary manuscripts within the framework of Islamic/Arabic heritage: a heritage that extends over time with a peculiar fashion of dynamic complementarity, resulting in that chirographic and documented culture – the Arabic/Islamic culture.