Archival Practices and the Codex 2

Abstract

This article contributes to the discussion of archival practices in pre-Ottoman West Asia and North Africa, emphasizing archival materialities and foregrounding the material choices of archival actors in their preservation strategies. The article’s central focus is the archival function of the codex, thereby proposing work across disciplinary divides between “book” and “document” studies. It explores why some actors favored this material form over others for preserving legal and administrative memory. Building on the previous conceptualization of how documentary texts and material artefacts were incorporated into codices, the present article asks why archival actors opted for specific types of codices to preserve documents. The case study discussed here is a personal manuscript, a ninth/fifteenth-century codex created by legal scholar and judge of Baalbek, Abū al-Faḍl al-Baʿlī. This personal manuscript, comprising numerous texts, contains two documents that, the article argues, al-Baʿlī included with archival intention. A transmediated letter from Cairo’s chief judge to his Damascene counterpart was intended to preserve proof of the family’s scholarly prestige. The second document, a book-sale list, was included because it referred to a collection of books that al-Baʿlī decided to preserve for its remarkable profile, especially its emphasis on theology and jurisprudence. Both documents show how a widening understanding of archival materialities and the enlargement of our documentary corpora offer new insights into Mamluk-period cultural and social history, including the vivacity of knowledge cultures beyond major urban centers. The article provides editions of both documents.