Javascript must be enabled to continue!
Saleroom Fiction versus Provenance
View through CrossRef
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.
Title: Saleroom Fiction versus Provenance
Description:
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.
Related Results
Come to Daddy? Claiming Chris Cunningham for British Art Cinema
Come to Daddy? Claiming Chris Cunningham for British Art Cinema
Twenty years after he came to prominence via a series of provocative, ground-breaking music videos, Chris Cunningham remains a troubling, elusive figure within British visual cultu...
Küberpunk ilma teadusulmeta / Cyberpunk without Science Fiction
Küberpunk ilma teadusulmeta / Cyberpunk without Science Fiction
Artikkel lähtub hüpoteesist, et mida tehnilisemaks muutub nüüdisaegne globaliseerunud kultuuriruum, seda teadusulmelisemaks muutub realism, mis püüab seda kultuuriruumi usutavalt p...
Une année amoureuse de Virginia Woolf, ou la Fiction biographique multipliée
Une année amoureuse de Virginia Woolf, ou la Fiction biographique multipliée
"Une année amoureuse" de Virginia Woolf, or Biographical Fiction Multiplied
Christine Duhon's novel, which is a work of fiction based on the verifiable and reliably used biog...
Sensation Fiction: New Directions
Sensation Fiction: New Directions
2022 marks forty years since Patrick Brantlinger posed the question ‘What is Sensational About the Sensation Novel?’ Since then, scholars have continued to probe and extend early d...
Feminism versus femininity? Exploring feminist dilemmas through cooperative inquiry research
Feminism versus femininity? Exploring feminist dilemmas through cooperative inquiry research
This article analyses the findings from a cooperative inquiry study with seven feminist identified women based in the UK. It explores the tensions participants experienced in negot...
Edusemiotics and Karl-Otto Apel’s transcendental semiotics
Edusemiotics and Karl-Otto Apel’s transcendental semiotics
AbstractThe semiotic turn and the twentieth century critique of the philosophy of consciousness presented a unique challenge and stressed the problematic status of old binary oppos...
The Portrayal of Discourse of Violence in Fantasy Fiction and Its Impact among Adolescents and Early Teenagers
The Portrayal of Discourse of Violence in Fantasy Fiction and Its Impact among Adolescents and Early Teenagers
Fantasy fiction is an extremely popular genre that acts as easy and interesting reading material, also mostly acquired by parents or peers as a gift. Its availability may also be p...
Dystopian Futures: Ugandan Science Fiction and Post-Apocalypse Contagions
Dystopian Futures: Ugandan Science Fiction and Post-Apocalypse Contagions
Uganda, like most countries on the African continent, has in the recent past grappled with existential pandemics such as AIDS, Marburg disease, cholera, Ebola, and currently the Co...