The Earliest Paper Documents in the Vienna Collection Revisited (original) (raw)
Josef von Karabacek was one of the central characters involved in establishing the Vienna papyrus collection “Papyri Erzherzog Rainer”. He knew the collection like no one else after him – and was not only familiar with the Arabic papyrus documents – he also knew the Arabic papers well. In 1887 he wrote his seminal article on Arab paper in which he combines literary and documentary evidence. He draws on his direct work and experience with the documents of the Vienna collection and refers to a multitude of Arabic paper documents. Among them are some that he assigned a very early date. Some years later, in 1893, in the famous “Papyri Erzherzog Rainer: Führer durch die Ausstellung” (PERF) we are provided with another compilation of early Arabic paper documents comprising inventory numbers and short descriptions of documents. Unfortunately, both publications lack illustrations of the presumably early documents. Karabacek suggested, that some of the documents stem actually from the 2nd century of the Hiǧra and many from the 3rd century. These claims of Karabacek will be examined in this article, following his references to early paper documents from both aforementioned publications of 1887 and 1893.
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J.J. Witkam, Arabic Manuscripts in the Library of Toulouse (France)
Journal of Islamic Manuscripts 5 (2014) 43–62
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