CSMC Newsletter

What role did local languages play in West African Islamic scholarship? Led by Dmitry Bondarev, ‘African Voices in the Islamic Manuscripts from Mali’ is a long-term project in which so-called Ajami manuscripts are digitised, categorised, and researched. On the occasion of the project’s half-way mark this year, he talked about the variety of materials he and his team have encountered, what they have learned so far, and what they want to focus on in the future. ‘The most enduring legacy of this research is to show the conscious and creative strategies African scholars used to shape their written cultures. Ajami manuscripts are not just teaching aids, but sites of critical engagement, religious and linguistic innovation, and the emergence of new literary registers.’

In a recent open-access publication in npj Heritage Science, CSMC researchers Sowmeya Sathiyamani, Alba Fedeli, Giuseppe Marotta, and Claudia Colini report on a cross-disciplinary investigation that integrates palaeographic, philological, and historical methods with material analysis to examine three undated, unidentified, and decontextualised Qurʾānic parchment fragments from the collection of the University of Münster. By combining these diverse approaches, the authors were able to reconstruct a plausible stratigraphy for the fragments, recontextualise them within their original historical setting, and attribute them to the same Umayyad Qur’an. The success of this integrated methodology highlights its potential for future research on isolated fragments and dismembered codices.

Congratulations to Ann-Lauren Osthof and Jenny Gabel! The two early-career researchers have been awarded the prestigious Peter Haber Prize for Digital History, presented by the Working Group for Digital History (AG Digitale Geschichtswissenschaft), for a poster presentation on their research project ‘Immersive City Scripts’ at the 55th Historikertag in Bonn. Their work combines classical studies and virtual reality development in an innovative way. In addition to documenting and studying the ancient Greek inscriptions in the ancient theatre of Miletus in textual and material form, they have reconstructed them in a detailed, immersive VR environment.

More good news in a similar vein: Thomas Asselborn, Magnus Bender, Ralf Möller, and Sylvia Melzer from the ‘Data Linking’ research field at the CSMC have been honoured with one of the Best Young Research Paper Awards at the renowned Conference on Computer Science and Intelligence Systems (FedCSIS) in Kraków. Their paper, ‘Treating OCR Output as a Language (TOOL) – Improving OCR Output with Seq2Seq Translation’, impressed the jury in the thematic track ‘AI in Digital Humanities, Computational Social Sciences and Economics Research (AI HuSo)’ with its novel approach to improving text recognition. Congratulations!

Inscriptions provide invaluable insights into the historical, social, and cultural developments of regions such as Lydia, Galatia, Paphlagonia, Phrygia, and Proseilemmene. The Epigraphic Database for Ancient Asia Minor (EDAK) has been designed as a comprehensive platform to facilitate engagement with this diverse material. The database already features over 6,000 records, each accompanied by the original text, translation, concise commentary, and detailed descriptions. Developed by ancient historians and the ‘Data Linking’ team at the CSMC, the newly updated beta version is now available online and offers users a modern data infrastructure with several key functionalities, such as searching by category and using an interactive map. 

The CSMC has recently signed two new Memoranda of Understanding with international partner institutions: the National Library and Archives of Bhutan, which holds a variety of objects which are relevant for our Working Group on ‘Asian Highland Manuscripts’; and the National Library of Peru in Lima, which is a partner in our project on ‘Archiving Colonialism: The Collections of Musical Manuscripts from Peru’. The aim of this latter collaboration is two to digitise the library’s collection of music manuscripts. We currently have over 50 Memoranda of Understanding with universities, libraries, and museums around the world, as well as numerous other formal and informal partnerships.

Silpsupa Jaengsawang has been closely associated with the CSMC for many years. An alumna of our Graduate School, she also was a Research Associate at the Sonderforschungsbereich (SFB) and a PI at our cluster, where she most recently worked on ‘Colophons in Lao Manuscripts from Luang Prabang: Exploring Production, Uses, and Interaction Between Sangha and Laity’. Now she has left Hamburg to join the Department of Asian and North African Studies (Dipartimento di Studi sull'Asia e sull'Africa Mediterranea) at Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia as Assistant Professor. She the first native Thai speaker ever appointed as Assistant Professor for Thai Studies in Italy. The entire CSMC community wishes Silpsupa the very best for the future!

Centuries before modern linguists, Andalusi scholar Isaac ibn Barūn laid the groundwork for comparative Semitic linguistics with his pioneering 12th-century Judaeo-Arabic grammar. Carlos Jacobo Puga Medina introduces us to this influential figure. ‘Today, the medieval Jewish legacy is being recovered and studied in its various scientific and literary manifestations, using modern methods, at leading international academic centres (…). Ibn Barūn should not be neglected in this recovery task, as his work is considered, to some degree, as the pinnacle in the comparative study of Semitic languages.’