Article of the Month - April 2021
 “Provenance in the Aggregate:
The Social Life of an Arabic Manuscript Collection in Naples”
(Paul Love: Humanities and Social Sciences,
Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane)

Love, Paul. "Provenance in the Aggregate: The Social Life of an Arabic Manuscript Collection in Naples,"
Manuscript Studies 3/2 (2018): 334-356.

Article Abstract:
This is a biography of a collection of eleven Arabic manuscripts at the library of the Università degli Studi di Napoli L'Orientale (UNO). These manuscripts do not contain otherwise unknown or even rare texts, since the titles in the collection exist in dozens of manuscript copies in northern African libraries in addition to printed editions. While the bulk of their content may be known to historians, the objects themselves have led rich social lives that merit attention. Like many biographies, however, the story of these objects suffers from a lack of detail. In this article, I suggest that if approached in the aggregate, the long-term provenance of Arabic manuscript collections like this one have a fascinating story to tell about their social histories. Even in the absence of every detail, these objects have much to say about the multiple and overlapping historical contexts through which they have moved.

Keywords: Manuscripts, provenance, Arabic, watermarks, Mediterranean, Djerba, Jebel Nafusa, Tunisia, Libya, Italy, Naples, Roberto Rubinacci, colonial knowledge production, libraries, paper history, Università degli Studi di Napoli L’Orientale, Ibadis, Ottomans 

Nomination Statement:
Paul Love focuses on the question of provenance and use of manuscripts at the collection level rather than on the individual manuscript to help us understand the role of manuscript culture in North African and Mediterranean society. Perhaps due to the unremarkable content of the collection, Dr. Love teases out the importance of manuscripts for communities across space and time. His approach helps us understand the use of individual manuscripts in the context of a collection. We see the history of the owners and books unfold as the collection moved from one location and owner to another. His article provides a unique window into material culture and the power of social forces, as much as individual reading interests, in shaping a collection and its history over time. He reminds us of the importance of manuscript culture within Mediterranean communities and its continuation into the modern era long after the development of the printing press.

Author’s Comment:
This article was a lot of fun to write because it traced the full arc of my research interests: manuscripts and watermarks, Ibadi history, and colonial knowledge production.  

In the field of Ibadi studies, attention to manuscript cultures and material histories is relatively new. The details of the paper trade linking the shores of the early modern Mediterranean or the utility of watermarks for understanding economic and cultural history still have a lot to offer the study of Ibadi and Maghribi history. It is there that I see my main contribution to the field with this and other articles I have written.   

This article also reflects my interest in the intersections of the history of Arabic manuscript collections and the production of knowledge about the Maghrib in colonial contexts. This collection in Naples, like so many other African manuscript collections today held in Europe, was acquired in a context of violent conquest. When using this or other Maghribi collections in Europe for research, I think it is important to acknowledge and to study those colonial pasts. In addition, I argue here that this colonial provenance turns out to be useful to think with in other ways, since it belongs to a much longer aggregated biography of these manuscripts. 

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