Towards an ideal chapter on Oriental MSS cataloguing

The goals of the workshop were twofold: to complete the overview of different Oriental manuscript traditions as reflected in cataloguing history begun during the first workshop in Uppsala, and to approach special challenges of cataloguing, in particular those connected with a proper description of manuscripts consisting of several production units. Both goals were auxiliary to the general scope of the meeting: getting a clearer idea of the structure and the content of the chapter on manuscript cataloguing in the future COMSt handbook. In the first part of the workshop the history and the state-of-the-art in the cataloguing of manuscripts from such hand-written book cultures as Georgian (J. Gippert and B. Outtier), Turkish (D.V. Proverbio) and Persian (I. Perho) were exempliefied. The presentation of the Armenian cataloguing tradition (A. Schmidt) argued Armenian cataloguers played a major role in the development of cataloguing and one cannot and should not automatically define the cataloguing as a “Western” invention, neither ascribe the progress in manuscript cataloguing to the advance of the European scholarship, as the standards in Armenian indigenous cataloguing have been higher than average since its very early inception. The presentation concerning the Hebrew manuscript tradition discussed cataloguing both Hebrew manuscripts and those in other languages written in Hebrew script (D. Sklare), bringing to the surface the complicated definition issue of an “Oriental” tradition, which was then extensively discussed, with the input concerning the similar approach needed for manuscripts in Arabic script (M. Nobili). The second part of the workshop was introduced by the problem statement made by M. Maniaci and P. Canart: how to perceive and adequately describe manuscripts that acquired their present shape and composition in the course of time, being a combination of several distinct codicological units (multi-structured descriptions). Already in his presentation of the Georgian manuscript cataloguing, J. Gippert particularly highlighted the difficulties presented by the complex nature of manuscripts (including, in this case, also palimpsests and manuscripts that had been dispersed in the course of time). In the opening presentation, experiences from cataloguing of Latin and Greek manuscripts as well as different terminological approaches were presented. The options of how a cataloguer can and should deal with composite manuscripts were presented by P. Andrist, whereas P. Gumbert sketched a historical overview of the study of the composite manuscript, confronting the Western and the Oriental studies. During the discussion, many of the fundamental definitions concerning the multi-layer manuscript nature were discussed, also as to the nature of the re-used manuscript materials.