Agenda
GULBENKIAN.PT
  • Course

Introduction to Islamic Manuscripts and Digital 

at the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum

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Exploring the manuscript collection of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, this 2-day short course is an introduction to codicology, manuscript studies and digital humanities.

The course is both theoretical and practical, and will include a demonstration of handling Islamic manuscripts, as well as a hands-on-training in automatically transcribing manuscripts using the latest text recognition software for manuscripts, the eScriptorium.

This course is part of the programme of the Gulbenkian Museum Academy and is organised and taught by Dr. Jessica Hallett from the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum, and Dr. Walid Ghali and Dr. Mathew Barber from Aga Khan University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations.

For more information, please contact: [email protected]. 

Attendees are expected to bring a laptop for the eScriptorium session.

Attendees must pick a digitised manuscript that they could use to practice with during the workshop. Help with this can be provided by the organisers.

The digitised manuscript should preferably be in a language that the attendee understands, as they will be practicing transcription during the session.

Attendees should contact organisers if their manuscript is in a language other than Arabic, Persian, Urdu or Ottoman Turkish.

Programme

09:30 / Arrival

10:00 / Introduction to the Course and to the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum

Welcome
Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation and Aga Khan University
Introduction concerning the overall academic approach of the course
Walid Ghali – Aga Khan University
Overview of the Gulbenkian Manuscript Collection, its history, and the types of works explored during the course
Jessica Hallett – Calouste Gulbenkian Museum

10:30 / What is Codicology?

This session aims to provide an overview of the field of codicology. It explores the role this science plays in manuscript studies and in identifying the critical features of Islamic manuscripts and collections. By the end of the session, participants should be able to answer the following questions: What is codicology? Why is it important? What are the basic terminologies in the field? What are the main features of the Islamic manuscripts? This session will also be devoted to studying the writing materials of Islamic manuscripts to address textual and historical questions such as dating, localisation, and socio-cultural and economic considerations. This presentation will focus on the writing supports (papyrus, parchment, and paper), page-preparation techniques, inks (black and coloured inks) and bindings.— INTERMISSION 15 min. —

11:45 / Exploring the Arts of the Book from the Gulbenkian Collection

— INTERMISSION 60 min. —

14:00 / ParaTextual Analysis/Text Transmission

This session will concentrate on the deeds (waqfiyyas) of the books. Apart from the legal issues of the endowment (waqf), from formulas and textual structures, it will explore the spiritual and social reward of the waqf, and the rich documentary value of the waqfiyyas. Additionally, this session will highlight several other types of notes that provide data on the history of a manuscript and its transmission. These include: corrections, comments, and other marginal notes related to the text of the manuscript book like collation, certificates, seal impressions and others.

15:00 / Exploring Manuscripts from the Gulbenkian Collection

— INTERMISSION 15 min. —

16:15 / Q&A and Conclusion

09:30 / Digital Codicology. Encoding and Transcribing Manuscripts through eScriptorium – Part 1

This practical session will provide a detailed introduction and tutorial for the open-source transcription tool eScriptorium. This software uses the latest machine-learning technology to annotate and transcribe manuscripts, and it has been designed for use with low-resource languages (such as Arabic, Persian, and Urdu). The session will be broken into three parts. This first part will briefly introduce the concepts of machine learning and optical character recognition, the principles behind training segmentation and transcription models. The tool eScriptorium will also be introduced.— INTERMISSION 15 min. —

11:15 / Digital Codicology. Encoding and Transcribing Manuscripts through eScriptorium – Part 2

The second part of the digital codicology session consists in the first hands-on training in using eScriptorium. Attendees will use the tool to annotate regions and lines in a manuscript and will learn how to digitally encode some of the codicological features discussed in other sessions.

12:30 / Visit to the Islamic Gallery of the Calouste Gulbenkian Museum

— ITERMISSION 60 min. —

14:00 / Digital Codicology. Encoding and Transcribing Manuscripts through eScriptorium – Part 3

In this third part, attendees will use eScriptorium to create manual and automatic transcriptions of their manuscripts. They will then learn how to use eScriptorium to train models to detect and annotate features in a manuscript and to improve transcription accuracy. — INTERMISSION 15 min. —

16:15 / Q&A and Conclusion

Credits

Organization and Coordination

Jessica Hallett – Senior Curator of the Middle East and China, and Head of Research at Calouste Gulbenkian Museum.

Walid Ghali – Head Librarian of the Aga Khan Library in London and Associate Professor of Islamic and Arabic studies.

Mathew Barber – Centre for Digital Humanities, is a Historian who uses a combination of digital and traditional methods, using computational text reuse detection to identify so-called ‘lost’ texts.

The Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation reserves the right to collect and keep records of images, sounds and voice for the diffusion and preservation of the memory of its cultural and artistic activity. For further information, please contact us through the Information Request form.

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