Arabic books lacked title pages and prefaces as separate frames

Evidence

Arabic writing, again, in general did not employ these devices, and instead began every work with a lengthy invocation (khitab) and indeed made the method of transition from the khitab into the rest of the text (fasi al-khitab) a subject of important theoretical debate. — Timothy Mitchell, Colonising Egypt, 464

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines khitab and fasi al-khitab as the invocation and the debated transition into a work, replacing the Western apparatus of preface and table of contents.
• SEED: Potential essay angle: what the absence of title pages and prefaces reveals about how a text constitutes its own exterior — paratext as a culturally specific technology rather than a neutral given.