Morisco scribal errors may reflect local conventions, not ignorance

Evidence

Temimi is judging this Morisco manuscript by standards he would apply in dealing with texts printed and edited by himself in modern times. To reach a fair comparative evaluation of copies executed by Morisco copyists, one ought to compare like with like. One should compare Morisco books with the productions of rural scribes at this time in other Islamic lands where Arabic was not the vernacular. In addition, al-Andalus did have some spelling conventions of its own, and departures from oriental norms that now have become standard throughout the Arab world may actually not arise from ignorance. Most important, it is necessary to bear in mind that the base text on which the Morisco copyist was working almost certainly did not correspond to whatever we may have available for comparison as a modern standard edition. The sort of relatively free treatment of the copy text that Temimi condemns was, I suspect, widespread at this time (not only in Islamic Spain, but elsewhere in the Islamic world, and not only in the Islamic world, for much the same sort of thing would have been going on in Christian Europe). — L. P. Harvey, Muslims in Spain, 1500 to 1614, 696

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies that al-Andalus had its own spelling conventions diverging from oriental norms.
• XREF: Connects to Milgrom’s work on medieval trade institutions and also to any study of scribal culture and textual transmission.
• SEED: An essay angle: judging historical manuscripts by modern editorial standards as a category error in scholarship — ‘comparing like with like’ in textual criticism.