Starting June 9, 10 am to 12 pm Eastern US via Zoom, we're doing a long deep dive into digital technologies, the political economy of data, histories of information, the haptics of longhand and electronic writing, reading thinkers from Adorno to Baudrillard to Pope Leo XIV:

Here is the line-up for our summer online reading group offerings, with details for each in the reply below- if you'd like to sign up sent us a DM or email us and we'll get you plugged in!

Manuscripts- including beautifully and intricately illumined prestige ones- tend to accumulate new text over the course of their lives, texts that sometimes appear quite incongruent to our eyes as in this page from a 15th c. Ottoman Qur'an (Dallas Museum of Art K.1.2014.22.1):

New essay today, taking a stab at making sense of our historical and political context as scholars of Islamicate history and deeply involved in digital humanities- with all of the fraught implications that involvement carries:

There Are No Neutrals Here

Situating Our Work in Contemporary Political Reality

openiti.substack.com

In this week's Arabic reading group we began working through SBB Wetzstein II 1743, a copy of a manāqib of ʿAdī ibn Musāfir- except that at some point it was reworked into a manāqib of Aḥmad ibn al-Rifāʿī through strategic erasure and rewriting. Lots going on in the title page:

A wonderful array of paratextual features are on fine display in this massive (526 folios) 1642 Ottoman Turkish mecmū'a that encompassed an array of genres and authors, the joint work of the münādī Aḥmed Ibn Mūsā and the kātib Muṣṭafā Ibn Aḥmed (SBB Ms. or. quart. 1988):

Opening page of a gorgeous bilingual translation of the Gospels of St. Matthew & St. Mark (probably had the rest at some point, is now fragmentary), Ottoman Turkish in an elegant nastaʿliq hand on the left, in Latin on the right, copied in 1660 somewhere in the Ottoman world (SBB Ms. or. oct. 3960):

Newly digitised Greek papyri from the Bodleian reveal the lives of ancient Egyptian gravediggers, including working as carers and taking part in legal affairs. 📜 [1/7]

First in a series of posts exploring a Persian translation of an Arabic work by a Safavid scholar (born in the Ottoman Empire) and contained within a South Asian compilation by an initiate of the Shaṭṭārīyah sufi lineage, whew:

Gained in Translation

An Analysis and Edition of a Persian Translation of the Kashkūl of Bahā' al-Dīn al-ʿĀmilī, Part I

openiti.substack.com

While the Persianate chahar bagh style of gardening is a bit more formal than the way in which I tend to garden- a mix of the formal and the semi-wild- part of me can definitely imagine one day building something like Babur's garden here, perhaps with a more permeable wall:

This semester we are facilitating not one, not two, but THREE manuscript reading groups, with an Arabic-specific group starting this Wednesday! Check out our newsletter for more details, and DM/email if you'd like to sign up!

In 2026 our two weekly Zoom-hosted manuscript reading groups will continue: in Ottoman Turkish we'll continue working on our anonymous travel account Fisher MSS 03218, while our Persian/Arabic group will tackle new texts from the Safīnat Baḥr al-muḥīt. We'd love to have you join us!

The angels (bar one) bow down before the newly created Adam, from a 1575 copy of the Majālis al-'ushshāq (BnF Supplément Persan 776):

New post describing my work of late on a fun little story contained in a diverse corpus of manuscripts spanning quite a long chronological period, from origins in Old Anatolian Turkish up to lithograph and print editions near the end of Ottoman Turkish being written in Arabic script:

The Tale of the Severed Head

Creating a Multi-Text Edition of Dāstān-i Keşik Baş

openiti.substack.com

New post by @jparkesallen.bsky.social on our new Substack newsletter, subscribe if you'd like regular updates and essays, some of which will be integrated with new video interviews and other material we plan on releasing soon!

From Damascus to Istanbul

The OpenITI Fall/Winter Ottoman Turkish Reading Group

openiti.substack.com

After a hiatus in (remembering to) record and post our Friday sessions, we've gotten back on track with our recording and uploading to our YouTube channel, so if you miss a Friday Persian session you can follow along later! Have a look at this week's session:

Safīnat al-baḥr al-muḥīṭ Reading Group: Sharḥ-i asmāʾ-i ḥusná, continued

YouTube video by OpenITI Project

youtube.com

"[T]he initiative will provide free, global access to a constantly expanding body of classical and modern Persian texts. The project will also partner with institutions to help safeguard thousands of at-risk manuscripts and rare books from collections in India, Pakistan and beyond."

Roshan Institute to Establish Persian Digital Library | Maryland Today

Supported by $1.8M Private Gift, Project Will Be First of Its Kind

today.umd.edu

A really lovely copy of an Ottoman Turkish fatwa concerning coffee (Ṣūrat-i fetvā der ḥaḳḳ-i ḳaḥve ve cevāb-i marḥūm-i Būstānzāde), decidedly stylistically unusual rendering for a document of this sort; part of a truly miscellaneous mecmَū'a (Leipzig University, Vollers 1019):

big if true

Unidentified men grabbing someone off the street and putting her in a car because she wrote an op-Ed. This as flatly authoritarian as anything we’ve seen in this country in a very long time.

Matt Novak@paleofuture.bsky.social · last yr.

Video of the international student at Tufts being arrested by "federal authorities" in Massachusetts has been released and it's terrifying. They're not even uniformed officers. Just secret police thugs in hoodies and masks. From WCVB: youtu.be/PuFIs7OkzYY

Pages from a Chinese-language explanation of the Arabic alphabet, Tianfang zimu jieyi 天方字母解义, a Qing era work written by the prolific Han Kitab author Liu Zhi (1669–1764):

Manuscript reading groups resume this week after our spring break last week, further explorations in the Safīnat on Persian Tuesday, Dāstān-ı Aṣḥābü'l-kehf on Ottoman Wednesday, and more Persian in the form of Risālah dar dam zadan on Friday- hope to see you at some of these offerings!

Lots of manuscript reading options this week! Dāstān-i Bahrām wa Bihrūz on Persian Tuesday, Dāstān-ı Aṣḥābü'l-kehf on Ottoman Wednesday, and more of the life of the Druze Shaykh al-Fāḍil on Friday followed by more Persian in the form of Risālah dar dam zadan

OpenITI Open Hours (Friday 10 am -12 pm Eastern US time) will feature manuscripts presented by two of our colleagues: from 10 to 11 we'll continue looking at a Druze hagiographical text in Arabic, and from 11 to 12 we'll be introduced to a Persian treatise on breath control:

This week's lineup: in our Persian group we'll be reading Dāstān-i Bahrām wa Bihrūz on Tuesday, Dāstān-ı Aṣḥābü'l-kehf in our Ottoman Turkish group on Wednesday, and on Friday from 11 to 12 a tbd manuscript text in Arabic (10 to 11 am for standard office hours)

Open Islamicate Texts Initiative @openiti.bsky.social · 2y ago

Here are our public offerings, all hosted via Zoom, for the spring semester (all events start next week, times in Eastern US); we'll be continuing two from last semester, and adding a third, OpenITI Open Hours, which will be more open and based on participant needs and interests:

Pages from a very eclectic calligraphic (and seal) album, seems to be a very wide range of periods, places, and genres represented within just a handful of pages (Bodleian Library MS. Arab. c. 75)

Our Ottoman Turkish manuscript reading group, having seen the Kesik Baş to the end of his story, is now diving into another manuscript, Mehmed Emīn's Dāstān-ı Aṣḥābü'l-kehf (Tübingen Ma VII 83), relating, along with some theological and other reflections, the story of the Companions of the Cave

Have you ever wondered how to use the abjad values of your name and your mom's name to calculate whether that town or village you're thinking about moving to is right for you? If so, then today is your lucky day!

Safīnat al-baḥr al-muḥīṭ Reading Group, January 28, 2025: All About Adab!

YouTube video by OpenITI Project

youtube.com

For this week's OpenITI Open Hours (Friday am) we're going to be reading together and discussing Lara Putman's influential 2016 article "The Transnational and the Text-Searchable: Digitized Sources and the Shadows They Cast" and its implications for Islamicate DH (link below)

Reminder that we'll be holding "OpenITI Open Hours" today from 10 am to 12 pm Eastern US time (link: umd.zoom.us/j/91533462213), feel free to stop by and ask questions about what we're up to at OpenITI, how you can get involved; or bring a manuscript you'd like to look at with others

Open Islamicate Texts Initiative @openiti.bsky.social · 2y ago

Here are our public offerings, all hosted via Zoom, for the spring semester (all events start next week, times in Eastern US); we'll be continuing two from last semester, and adding a third, OpenITI Open Hours, which will be more open and based on participant needs and interests: