New essay today, taking a stab at making sense of our historical and political context as scholars of Islamicate history and deeply involved in digital humanities- with all of the fraught implications that involvement carries:

In this week's Arabic reading group we began working through SBB Wetzstein II 1743, a copy of a manāqib of ʿAdī ibn Musāfir- except that at some point it was reworked into a manāqib of Aḥmad ibn al-Rifāʿī through strategic erasure and rewriting. Lots going on in the title page:

A wonderful array of paratextual features are on fine display in this massive (526 folios) 1642 Ottoman Turkish mecmū'a that encompassed an array of genres and authors, the joint work of the münādī Aḥmed Ibn Mūsā and the kātib Muṣṭafā Ibn Aḥmed (SBB Ms. or. quart. 1988):

Opening page of a gorgeous bilingual translation of the Gospels of St. Matthew & St. Mark (probably had the rest at some point, is now fragmentary), Ottoman Turkish in an elegant nastaʿliq hand on the left, in Latin on the right, copied in 1660 somewhere in the Ottoman world (SBB Ms. or. oct. 3960):

Newly digitised Greek papyri from the Bodleian reveal the lives of ancient Egyptian gravediggers, including working as carers and taking part in legal affairs. 📜 [1/7]

First in a series of posts exploring a Persian translation of an Arabic work by a Safavid scholar (born in the Ottoman Empire) and contained within a South Asian compilation by an initiate of the Shaṭṭārīyah sufi lineage, whew:

While the Persianate chahar bagh style of gardening is a bit more formal than the way in which I tend to garden- a mix of the formal and the semi-wild- part of me can definitely imagine one day building something like Babur's garden here, perhaps with a more permeable wall:

This semester we are facilitating not one, not two, but THREE manuscript reading groups, with an Arabic-specific group starting this Wednesday! Check out our newsletter for more details, and DM/email if you'd like to sign up!

In 2026 our two weekly Zoom-hosted manuscript reading groups will continue: in Ottoman Turkish we'll continue working on our anonymous travel account Fisher MSS 03218, while our Persian/Arabic group will tackle new texts from the Safīnat Baḥr al-muḥīt. We'd love to have you join us!

The angels (bar one) bow down before the newly created Adam, from a 1575 copy of the Majālis al-'ushshāq (BnF Supplément Persan 776):

New post describing my work of late on a fun little story contained in a diverse corpus of manuscripts spanning quite a long chronological period, from origins in Old Anatolian Turkish up to lithograph and print editions near the end of Ottoman Turkish being written in Arabic script:

New post by @jparkesallen.bsky.social on our new Substack newsletter, subscribe if you'd like regular updates and essays, some of which will be integrated with new video interviews and other material we plan on releasing soon!

After a hiatus in (remembering to) record and post our Friday sessions, we've gotten back on track with our recording and uploading to our YouTube channel, so if you miss a Friday Persian session you can follow along later! Have a look at this week's session:

"[T]he initiative will provide free, global access to a constantly expanding body of classical and modern Persian texts. The project will also partner with institutions to help safeguard thousands of at-risk manuscripts and rare books from collections in India, Pakistan and beyond."

A really lovely copy of an Ottoman Turkish fatwa concerning coffee (Ṣūrat-i fetvā der ḥaḳḳ-i ḳaḥve ve cevāb-i marḥūm-i Būstānzāde), decidedly stylistically unusual rendering for a document of this sort; part of a truly miscellaneous mecmَū'a (Leipzig University, Vollers 1019):

big if true

Unidentified men grabbing someone off the street and putting her in a car because she wrote an op-Ed. This as flatly authoritarian as anything we’ve seen in this country in a very long time.

Pages from a Chinese-language explanation of the Arabic alphabet, Tianfang zimu jieyi 天方字母解义, a Qing era work written by the prolific Han Kitab author Liu Zhi (1669–1764):

Manuscript reading groups resume this week after our spring break last week, further explorations in the Safīnat on Persian Tuesday, Dāstān-ı Aṣḥābü'l-kehf on Ottoman Wednesday, and more Persian in the form of Risālah dar dam zadan on Friday- hope to see you at some of these offerings!

Lots of manuscript reading options this week! Dāstān-i Bahrām wa Bihrūz on Persian Tuesday, Dāstān-ı Aṣḥābü'l-kehf on Ottoman Wednesday, and more of the life of the Druze Shaykh al-Fāḍil on Friday followed by more Persian in the form of Risālah dar dam zadan

OpenITI Open Hours (Friday 10 am -12 pm Eastern US time) will feature manuscripts presented by two of our colleagues: from 10 to 11 we'll continue looking at a Druze hagiographical text in Arabic, and from 11 to 12 we'll be introduced to a Persian treatise on breath control:

This week's lineup: in our Persian group we'll be reading Dāstān-i Bahrām wa Bihrūz on Tuesday, Dāstān-ı Aṣḥābü'l-kehf in our Ottoman Turkish group on Wednesday, and on Friday from 11 to 12 a tbd manuscript text in Arabic (10 to 11 am for standard office hours)

Pages from a very eclectic calligraphic (and seal) album, seems to be a very wide range of periods, places, and genres represented within just a handful of pages (Bodleian Library MS. Arab. c. 75)

Our Ottoman Turkish manuscript reading group, having seen the Kesik Baş to the end of his story, is now diving into another manuscript, Mehmed Emīn's Dāstān-ı Aṣḥābü'l-kehf (Tübingen Ma VII 83), relating, along with some theological and other reflections, the story of the Companions of the Cave

Have you ever wondered how to use the abjad values of your name and your mom's name to calculate whether that town or village you're thinking about moving to is right for you? If so, then today is your lucky day!

For this week's OpenITI Open Hours (Friday am) we're going to be reading together and discussing Lara Putman's influential 2016 article "The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast" and its implications for Islamicate DH (link below)

Reminder that we'll be holding "OpenITI Open Hours" today from 10 am to 12 pm Eastern US time (link: umd.zoom.us/j/91533462213), feel free to stop by and ask questions about what we're up to at OpenITI, how you can get involved; or bring a manuscript you'd like to look at with others

For our Tuesday Persian manuscript reading group, we're going to be working through this curiously arranged little text on "the adāb of sneezing, yawning, burping, and drinking water," so you can work on your Persian skills *and* your etiquette knowledge, a two for one deal!

Page from an anonymous 18th or 19th c. Persian and Arabic treatise on nikāḥ, with an Urdu (well, what we'd now call Urdu- the work itself calls it 'zabān-i Hindī' as was standard for at the time) alternating line rubricated translation (Raja of Mahmudabad Palace Library MS 652):

We resume our Persian manuscript virtual reading group tomorrow (Tuesday, January 14), continuing with the fabulous treasury of medieval and early modern texts contained within the Safīnat al-baḥr al-muḥīṭ; check out the video for a taste, DM to be added to the group, we've got some room available

Here are our public offerings, all hosted via Zoom, for the spring semester (all events start next week, times in Eastern US); we'll be continuing two from last semester, and adding a third, OpenITI Open Hours, which will be more open and based on participant needs and interests:

In rare (and thrilling) #paperhistory news: www.newberry.org/news/analysi... "At approximately 49 sheets, the discovery increases the amount of maguey paper known to have survived by about four times."

Alright *cracks knuckles* let's do this! Today I'm inaugurating an episodic Monday series titled History of Islamic Art in 100 Objects. But we have to ask the most important question first: What is Islamic art? Also, why is this even a question? 🧵 #IslamicArt100Objects

HMML preserves three copies of a very famous history of doctors by Ibn Abī Uṣaybiʻah (d. 1269/1270 CE), in the collections of the Austrian National Library (22803), Universität Tübingen in Germany (42212), and St. Mark's Monastery in Jerusalem (SMMJ 00237, pictured): www.vhmml.org/readingRoom/...

It's #ManuscriptMonday, time to start a 🧵 with Arabic book curses in manuscripts from St Catherine's Monastery, Sinai. The first is from Sin. gr. 742, 1r: 'Endowment to the monastery of Mt Sinai. Anyone who somehow takes it away from there is excommunicated and separated from the glory of God.'

Recently published this book of essays celebrating 50 years of Genizah research at @theul.bsky.social. Seems like a good time to share some of my favorites. Here's one by my former teacher, Geoffrey Khan, about a medieval Arabic document he found in Russia 30 years ago: doi.org/10.1163/9789004712331

We have a new Biblia Arabica blog online! Miriam L. Hjälm shares her favourite finds and some of the challenges of cataloguing the British Library's Christian Arabic Bible manuscripts: biblia-arabica.com/a-new-catalo...

A verse from Exodus (the Bible. Not the film) Hebrew in Arabic script, with Hebrew (Tiberian) vocalisation marks 10th century manuscript (h/t Moshe Yagor; from BL)