October 8th, 2025 - January 21st, 2026
5PM - 6:30PM
Hybride Event
Campus of the University of Vienna, Institute's Auditorium
This lecture series explores recent advances in the study of manuscript cultures across the Ottoman Empire, the Arabic-speaking world, and Central Asia. It examines manuscripts as dynamic media for transmitting knowledge, shaping identities, and preserving cultural memory. Emphasizing new methodologies and interdisciplinary perspectives, the series considers manuscripts as material, intellectual, and social artifacts, focusing on their production, circulation, and afterlives. Through contributions by established and emerging scholars, the series offers a forum for rethinking manuscript cultures as interconnected and evolving phenomena. It engages critically with the historiography of manuscript studies and promotes scholarly collaboration across linguistic, geographic, and disciplinary boundaries. Sessions address a broad range of traditions—Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Armenian, Syriac, Hebrew, Chagatai, and others—within a comparative and multilingual framework. Topics include codicology, palaeography, manuscript production, reading practices, historical libraries, and the transition to print. Special attention is given to digital humanities, cataloguing challenges, and preservation politics. By drawing on case studies from Istanbul, Cairo, Tashkent, and beyond, the series highlights the entangled histories of manuscript cultures and examines how multilingualism, scribal practices, and digital access reshape our understanding of textual heritage.
For further information and the Zoom-Link, see: https://orientalistik.univie.ac.at/fachrichtungen/turkologie/veranstaltungen/ringvorlesung-turkologie
Programme
08.10.2025
Nazlı Vatansever (University of Münster)
Setting Poems to Music: Compilations of Ottoman Lyrics within Manuscript Culture (Abstract & Bio)
15.10.2025
Katharina Ivanyi (University of Vienna)
Yaḥyā b. Ādam’s (d. 203/818) Kitāb al-kharāj (Paris, BnF Arabe 6030) revisited: Reflections on the textual and editorial history of an early Islamic compilation of legal ḥadīth (Abstract & Bio)
22.10.2025
Ulfat Abdurasulov (Institute of Iranian Studies, ÖAW)
Paper Frontiers: Encountering the Turkic and Persian World in Muscovite Diplomatic Chancellery (Abstract & Bio)
29.10.2025
Rıza Yıldırım (University of Vienna)
The Question of Authorship and Religious Authority in Alevi Manuscripts (Abstract & Bio)
05.11.2025
Aysima Mirsultan (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin)
Constructing Knowledge: The Formation of the Turkistan Collection at the Berlin State Library (Abstract & Bio)
12.11.2025
Tijana Krstić (Central European University)
Preaching, Books, and Community in Ottoman Hungary: Browsing Through the Library Collection of Süleyman Efendi, the Vaiz of the Grand Mosque of Buda (c. 1643-c.1655) (Abstract & Bio)
19.11.2025
Elif Sezer (Sabancı University, Istanbul)
Materiality, Content, and Function of Kıra'ât Notes on Late Ottoman Popular Storybooks (Abstract & Bio)
26.11.2025
Elvira Wakelnig (University of Vienna)
A Thousand and One Arabic Medical Manuscripts (Abstract & Bio)
03.12.2025
Jeanine Dağyeli (University of Vienna, Institute of Iranian Studies, ÖAW)
Tracing the oral-written interface: Vernacular crafts‘ codices in Central Asia (18th-early 21st centuries) (Abstract & Bio)
10.12.2025
Philip Bockholt (University of Münster)
Elite Translation Projects in the Tulip Period: Material Evidence and Cultural Context (Abstract & Bio)
17.12.2025
Polina Ivanova (Institute of Iranian Studies, ÖAW)
Scribes without Scriptoria: Towards a Social History of Armenian Manuscript-Making in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Abstract & Bio)
07.01.2026
Gisela Procházka-Eisl (University of Vienna)
A glimpse into the treasure trove of miscellanies: mecmūʿa manuscripts in the collections of the Austrian National Library (Abstract & Bio)
14.01.2026
Bruno De Nicola (Institute of Iranian Studies, ÖAW)
Sufi Teaching in the Margins: Ritual, Pedagogy, and Intertextuality in a Kubrawi Manuscript from 15th c. Badakhshan (Abstract & Bio)
21.01.2026
Daniel Beben (Nazarbayev University)
How to read a genealogical text: The Persianate nasab tradition as cultural archive and social practice (Abstract & Bio)
