The Blunders of Inexperienced Scribes in Mixing Texts and Margins: A Look at Fakhr al-Din al-Razi's Testimonies
Document Type : pajoohesh
Author
10.22081/jap.2024.76366
Abstract
The addition of marginal notes to the main text is one of the types of scribal errors that occasionally occurred in the process of scribing ancient works in manuscripts. This led to the obscurity, misinterpretation, or inconsistency of certain passages in these texts. Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāḍī (d. 606 AH), the renowned Ash‘arite scholar, discusses the confusing and misleading scribal errors of adding marginal notes to the main text in manuscripts in two instances in his commentary on Ibn Sina's (d. 428 AH) famous work, "‘Uyūn al-Ḥikmah". He mentions that such scribal errors also occurred in his own works. His testimony is noteworthy from several aspects, particularly as it indicates the early occurrence of these types of errors and alterations in manuscripts, and that such problematic scribal errors could occur not only over several centuries but sometimes even within a few decades or year.
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