Workshop on Ottoman Turkish manuscripts
23 June 2009
SOAS recently co-convened a specialist four-day workshop on Ottoman Turkish manuscripts in collaboration with, and generously funded by, the Wellcome Foundation Library (Asian Collections).
Professor Philip Jaggar (SOAS) assisted the main coordinator Dr Nikolaj Serikoff (Asian Collections librarian), and Philippe Bora Keskiner (an expert on Ottoman calligraphy doing doctoral research at SOAS) was academic tutor at the workshop. Dr Yorgos Dedes of the Near and Middle East department also attended. Bora Keskiner introduced different Ottoman hands and carefully read a selection of original manuscripts with the group. He also included practical sessions and exercises in handling original manuscripts.
This event is part of a more comprehensive series of manuscriptology workshops covering a range of old Asian and African medical manuscripts and manuscript cultures from within the Wellcome Asian Collections. Manuscripts in Arabic, Japanese and Persian have also been covered, and the plan is to offer similar events dealing with, inter alia, Sanskrit and Amharic (Ge'ez).
