Marginalia rarely gets top billing in the study of books, yet a new study argues that the scribbled notes in the margins of Arabic manuscripts may be as valuable as the main texts they surround. Certificates of Audition (Samāʿāt) in Islamic Manuscripts, published in the Journal of Islamic Thought and Civilization, examines a class of notes known as samāʿāt — records of who heard a manuscript read aloud, when, where and from whom. The authors, Saleh Muhammad Zeki Mahmood Al-Leheabi and Ahmed Ameen of the University of Sharjah, make a persuasive case that these notes are independent historical sources in their own right.
For readers drawn to memoir and biography, the appeal lies in what these margins reveal about people. The study recovers names of women, merchants and craftspeople who seldom appear in chronicles or biographical dictionaries, turning a manuscript’s flyleaves into a quiet register of medieval social life. It is a scholarly work, but its central idea — that the margins can carry as much history as the text — is one that general readers can appreciate.
What is Certificates of Audition (Samāʿāt) in Islamic Manuscripts?
The study is a manuscript-based historical analysis of samāʿāt, the Arabic term for audition records. When a book was read aloud before a teacher and assembled students, a note was added recording the title of the work, the teacher’s name, the attendees, the date and the location. Over generations, a single manuscript could accumulate dozens or even hundreds of such notes, each one a small certificate of authenticity.
The authors surveyed 47 manuscripts containing 132 samāʿāt, drawn from collections in Turkey, Egypt, Germany and Syria, and dating from the sixth to the fifteenth centuries. Three works receive detailed treatment: al-Tirmidhī’s al-Shamāʾil al-Muḥammadiyya, al-Khurāʾiṭī’s Iʿtilāl al-Qulūb, and al-Anbārī’s Iḍāḥ al-Waqf wa-l-Ibtidāʾ. The methodology combines palaeographic transcription, biographical data extraction and comparative analysis of documentary formulae.
What stands out
A rigorous documentary method
The study does not treat marginal notes as incidental scribbles. It identifies three distinct types of certificate — full, partial and fragmentary — each with its own standard phrasing, and shows how these formulae allow researchers to gauge the extent of transmission. This attention to form gives the argument a solid evidentiary base.
A social history hidden in plain sight
Perhaps the most striking finding is the inclusiveness of the record. The samāʿāt name women, traders and artisans alongside wealthy jurists, challenging narrower assumptions about who participated in Islamic education. These are precisely the figures that conventional biographical dictionaries overlook, and the study makes a strong case for their recovery.
Scholarly networks across borders
The certificates trace movement between Baghdad, Fusṭāṭ, Damascus, Jerusalem and Isfahan, showing that students travelled across political boundaries in pursuit of knowledge. The authors argue that modern national borders did not constrain medieval scholarly mobility, and the evidence they assemble supports that claim.
A practical digital agenda
The study closes with a proposal for digital cataloguing standards and TEI-XML encoding, which would make these records searchable and open them to network analysis. This forward-looking element gives the research a usefulness beyond its immediate subject.
Who it’s for
The primary audience is academic: historians of Islam, codicologists, palaeographers and graduate students working with manuscript collections. Librarians and archivists responsible for Arabic holdings will also find the discussion of cataloguing standards directly relevant to their work.
General readers with an interest in book history or the social history of the medieval world can still profit from the study, particularly its case studies and its central argument. The prose is scholarly, and some sections assume familiarity with Arabic terms, but the core findings are stated clearly enough to follow without specialist training.
What makes it worth considering
The study’s greatest strength is its reframing of the margin. Where earlier scholarship often treated samāʿāt as ancillary, the authors present them as independent sources capable of filling gaps in existing historical records and even reconstructing lost or unidentified works. That is a significant claim, and it is defended with care.
The comparison to modern peer review is also illuminating, if tentative: both practices exist to establish trust in knowledge, though the medieval certificate was public and named while modern review is anonymous. The study does not overplay the analogy, which is to its credit. Its call for systematic cataloguing is timely, and the sample transcriptions and appendices make the argument concrete.
Verdict
A rigorous and quietly revolutionary study that turns the margins of Arabic manuscripts into a rich historical archive. It deserves a place on the shelf of anyone interested in how knowledge was transmitted, certified and remembered.
Frequently asked questions
Samu0101u02bfu0101t are marginal notes recording who heard a manuscript read aloud and thereby certified its authenticity and transmission.
It was authored by Saleh Muhammad Zeki Mahmood Al-Leheabi and Ahmed Ameen of the University of Sharjah.
The authors surveyed 47 manuscripts containing 132 audition records from collections in Turkey, Egypt, Germany and Syria.
It is written for an academic audience, but its core argument and case studies are clear enough for general readers with an interest in history.
It appears in the Journal of Islamic Thought and Civilization and is available through its DOI.
