Authors as Readers in the Mamlūk Period and Beyond

Authors read. They read to inform themselves and stay up-to-date, they read for their
pleasure and to get inspired. And they write, by definition, using their readings in the
course of their writing process. Authors often keep written traces (sometimes dated)
of what they have read: a short statement on a manuscript page, a blurb, an anecdote
in a letter to a colleague or friend, a r sum  or notes jotted down in a notebook, a
reading journal, an explicit quotation in their own work or the use of information
unknown elsewhere than in a specific source.
Scrutinising authors’ readings is informative on a variety of levels. It provides information
on their tastes and interests, on the subjects of their work at a given period, on
their methodology and possible note-taking strategies, or on their scholarly milieu. It
also brings a lot to intellectual history, giving information about the texts and manuscripts
circulating at a certain period, in a certain place and milieu.
The research project RASCIO (Reader, Author, Scholar in Context of Information Overflow,
Marie Curie Grant Agreement no. 749180, 2018-21) aimed at getting a better
sense of al-Ṣafadī’s (d. 764/1363) working method, his scholarly network, his habits as
a reader and as a scholar in the extremely rich context of the beginning of the Mamlūk
period. Reaching the end of the project, an international conference was to be organised
in order to share the results of RASCIO and to broaden the scope by confronting
these results to other situations: other authors, other periods, other places… The
world pandemic of COVID-19 obliged us to cancel the event, originally planned for 10-
12 December 2020 (then postponed to 13-15 April 2021), at the University Ca’ Foscari
Venice, and entitled Authors as Readers in the Mamlūk Period and Beyond. Al-Ṣafadī
and his Peers. We nevertheless proposed that all speakers directly write an article
instead of a conference paper, and to publish the initially planned proceedings. Nine
speakers replied positively and this book is the result of this initiative.
Authors as Readers in the Mamlūk Period and Beyond gathers eight contributions investigating
the readings of different authors from different points of view. The studied
authors are mainly from pre-modern Islam – al-Qādī al-Fāḍil, Ibn Taymiyya, al-Ṣafadī,
al-Subkī, al-Maqrīzī – with three notable exceptions: an incursion in the Ottoman
nineteenth century with Esʿad Efendi, a detour by the French court of King Charles V
with his physician Evrart de Conty working as a translator, and a preface mentioning
the papyrus of Philod me de Gadara, from Greek Antiquity.