ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Writing around the Text: On the Forms and Functions of Peritextual Notations in Ḥisāb Manuscripts

• In Event: Diagrammatic Computations and Their Symbolic Aspects (II)

English Abstract

Numerous manuscripts of Arabic ḥisāb works contain symbolic elements in the peritext. Often organized in tabular form, and often written in distinct temporal layers from the main text, these symbolic elements include numerals (used in a variety of ways), abbreviations, and other kinds of notations for representing algebraic equations and arithmetic operations. Such traces form immediate counterexamples to the longstanding misconception that Arabic algebra was written only discursively, that is, in full grammatical sentences. Although the evidence offered by these traces have been known to historians since the nineteenth century, and although some recent work has started to change this picture, there still remain unaddressed many questions about the status of these notations in the peritext: What is their relation to the body of the treatise, and to other symbolic elements that are incorporated into the main text? Under what conditions are such peritextual features transmitted by copyists? What function did they serve for the reader putting the text into practice, for the student or teacher of algebra? My exploration will take as its point of departure an extensively annotated copy of a short appendix on solutions to higher-order equations by Ibn al-Majdī (d. 1447, Cairo), part of his larger commentary on Ibn al-Bannāʾ (Ḥāwī al-lubāb fī sharḥ talkhīṣ ʾaʿmāl al-ḥisāb), which I will situate in relation to some similar manuscripts from the Ottoman madrasa context. Not only do I focus on the various diagrammatic features of these notations themselves (e.g., their spatial organization, representational uses), but also I consider these notations in the context of how diagrams were transmitted by copyists in Arabic mathematical manuscripts more generally.

Author

• Alex Garnick, Harvard University