I’ll post with the link once it’s live. the volume will be open access, as is its companion volume on the eighth-century Armenian text that started this whole project [published in 2024, linked here]

of course, this sort of collaborative project would not be possible w/o a great interdisciplinary team. We met in Chicago & Dublin to work, so here’s the obligatory Guinness pic

that gives us 6 different versions of the correspondence btw ʿUmar and Leo, some penned by Christians and others by Muslims, in 4 languages. and in the introduction to this volume we show that they’re all actually related!

but the amazing Latinists on our team found FOUR additional mss of the Latin, different from Champier’s text. 3 from Spain, 1 from Carolingian France. It’s the oldest known ms translated from Arabic

the Christian Arabic does show clear relationship to the Latin printed version, which appears in the works of a 16th-cent French scholar. This is the Latin version modern scholars already know about

there is another Arabic version in 10th-cent. manuscript from Sinai, but this one reports a Christian version of the correspondence and does not show direct relationship w/ the Muslim Arabic. *it* lays out an argument abt how Christianity is correct...

the Aljamiado overlaps for a few paragraphs w/ the Muslim Arabic version, a 9th or 10th-cent. manuscript once in Damascus & now in Istanbul. only one spare quire remains, also presenting Islamic doctrine

but the same biblical quotes—in the same order—are cited in the Aljamiado, produced by a Muslim in Spain in 2 mss (one 15th cent, one 16th). The Aljamiado has an isnad back to 8th-cent Syria. *this* version explains how Islam is correct and Christianity is not

we started with the Armenian, which was translated from a lost Greek version. It’s in an 8th-cent. text, preserved in Ilkhanid-era manuscript. It champions Christianity & explains how Islam is incorrect

in this volume, we edit and translate all known versions of the correspondence btw the Umayyad caliph ʿUmar b. ʿAbd al-ʿAzīz (717-720) & the Byzantine emperor Leo the Isaurian (717-741).

So far, seems reasonable. but the texts jump around the Mediterranean in circuitous paths

The business meeting marks the official launch of the @alusuralwusta.bsky.social: journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/al....

A huge thanks to @zaydeantrim.bsky.social, @medievalqabq.bsky.social and the editorial board for all of their hard work in bringing this to fruition.

congratulations and well deserved!

I desperately wanted to stuff this one in my purse, but I was told customs would stop me

Oh, master of spices, I await your knowledge

Oh, so you are traveling the Silk Road, then??

Kindred Voices by Michael Pifer (2021)