Textual Transmission in the Islamic Manuscript Age explores the ways in which texts were transmitted, transformed, adapted, translated, and received across the Islamic world. Bringing together sixteen studies of Arabic and Persian historiographical, genealogical, religious, and literary works, the volume approaches textual transmission not simply as the preservation of an original text, but as an active process shaped by scribes, scholars, patrons, translators, readers, and changing intellectual and political contexts.
The contributions examine changes in historiography, the afterlives of genealogical and biographical compilations, the transmission of religious texts, the evolution of literary works, and translation processes across different regions and periods. Drawing extensively on manuscript evidence, they investigate variant recensions, abridgements, additions, adaptations, rededications, and the movement of texts between languages and cultural settings. Case studies range from Mamluk and Ottoman historical manuscripts to Safavid Shiʿi literature, Persianate adab, the Ḥamza-nāma, Kalīla va Dimna, the Shāhnāma, and Persian translations of Arabic and Sanskrit works.
Together, these studies demonstrate the dynamic lives of texts in manuscript cultures and offer new perspectives on how knowledge was reshaped as works travelled across time, languages, regions, and communities.

Contributors
Philip Bockholt, Ken’ichi Isogai, Takao Ito, Christine Kämpfer, Yui Kanda, Nobuaki Kondo, Natalie Kraneiß, Paula Manstetten, Ryo Mizukami, Kazuo Morimoto, Nobutaka Nakamachi, Osamu Otsuka, Eva Orthmann, Ines Weinrich, Akihiko Yamaguchi, and Kumiko Yamamoto.