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This guided display (Show-and-Tell) by the Bodleian’s expert curators will introduce a number of manuscripts from its world-class collections which have a Syrian connection. Our display will include manuscripts from Aleppo, the site of a Jewish community since Roman times and which, from the 17th century, was a great hub for European collectors Oriental books.
We will be highlighting a 14th-century illustrated copy of Kalilah wa-Dimnah which was made in Mameluke Syria, a copy of Hilal ibn Abi Hilal al-Himsi’s (a native of Homs) translation of Apollonius of Perga’s Book on Conic Sections, a work on Astronomy by Ibn al-Shatir, 14th-century timekeeper at the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus, and an illustrated History of Kurdistan in the hand of the author Sharaf al-Din al-Bidlisi. Among the Hebrew manuscripts we will show a wonderful copy of the Qur’an transliterated into Hebrew letters, a copy of Maimonides’s code of law, the Mishneh Torah, certified as authentic by the philosopher, rabbi and physician Maimonides whose family found refuge in Aleppo after they had to leave Egypt.
The Syria Writes Literary Festival will run from Saturday 30 October to Friday 26 November. It will feature public talks from Syrian authors and activists and intimate lunch-time conversations with some of Syria’s most beloved authors. The Festival is co-hosted by Suzan Meryem Rosita, Curator of Syria and Silence, and Mohamed-Salah Omri, Professor of Arabic and Comparative Literature.
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