Introduction

The seminars entitled Palaeography Between East & West, which I convened at Sapienza University, aimed at offering a forum, a place of sharing knowledge and debate, to scholars who deal with manuscript materials in various languages and alphabets. Entitled “Paleografia, paleografie. Esperienze a confronto” (2 March 2011), “Tra lingue e scritture. Itinerari grafici nel Mediterraneo e oltre” (2 April 2012), “La Paleografia tra Oriente e Occidente” (5 April 2013), “La Paleografia tra Oriente e Occidente – Palaeography between East and West” (19 May 2014), these seminars (Figs. 1-4) gathered contributions about very different areas. The essays gathered in this volume contribute to the idea of a world pale- ography. I very much hope that the field of palaeography, and the related do- mains of book-history and manuscript-culture, will receive more attention in future, and scientific recognition as an autonomous domain of research with- in Islamic studies and as a proper field of research within palaeographical studies.