Intitulé et présentation de la thèse de doctorat

Early Qur’ānic manuscripts, their text, and the Alphonse Mingana papers held in the Department of Special Collections of the University of Birmingham.

The Special Collections of the Cadbury Research Library at the University of Birmingham hold seven early Qur’ānic pieces on parchment and papyrus dating from the seventh century. Alphonse Mingana purchased them from the antiquarian dealer von Scherling in 1936. Through investigation of the private correspondence of Mingana and archival documents, this research provides new information about the origin and history of the fragments, whose reception has been influenced by the European cultural context at the beginning of the twentieth century, in contrast with the public image proposed in catalogues, official documents and previous studies.
Furthermore, this research is an attempt to initiate an alternative perspective in analysing and editing the physical objects and texts of early Qur’ānic manuscripts by applying digital philology, thus using XML-encoded expressions to transcribe all of the richness of manuscripts in reconstructing the history of their transmission. This perspective interprets the process of the making of the manuscript text and the context in which the manuscript was written, thus editing its mobile and multi-layered text, differently from previous examples of the edition of early Qur’ānic manuscripts.

Principales publications

– A.Perg.2: a non palimpsest and its corrections, in “Manuscripta Orientalia”, 11,1 (2005), pp. 20-27;
– Early evidences of variant readings in Qur’…nic manuscripts, in K.Ohlig,G.R.Puin ed., Die dunklen Anfänge.
Neue Forschungen zur Entstehung und frühen Geschichte des Islam, Verlag Hans Schiler, Berlin 2005,
pp.293-316;
– Mingana and the manuscript of Mrs. Agnes Smith Lewis, one century later, in “Manuscripta Orientalia”, 11,3
(2005), pp. 3 – 7;
– Lingua e scrittura del Corano: gli inizi in Vedi alla voce: lingua araba. Elementi di linguistica per lo studio e la
conoscenza dell’arabo (a cura di J.Guardi, Prefazione di K.Versteegh), A Oriente!, Milano 2007, pp. 17-53;
– I manoscritti di Sanaa: fogli sparsi che diventano Corani in AA.VV., Il mio cuore è a Oriente. Studi di
linguistica storica, filologica e cultura ebraica dedicate a Maria Luisa Mayer Modena, in “Quaderni di Acme”,
101 (2008), pp.25-48. (Source : CV : en ligne)