Abstract

The main lacuna in the study of the mathematical sciences in Islamicate societies is the continued separation between content and context. An important aspect of this separation is the practice of ignoring the material carriers of texts that provide content, i.e., the manuscripts in which the treatises are embedde and the folios on which they written and illustrated. This practice has prevented us from studying both content- and context-related features of such material carriers and reflect on their meaning for how the mathematical sciences were practiced in teaching and scholarly debates, how mathematical knowledge spread, changed, and related to other fields of knowledge, culture, or social practices, and how and where their material reproduction took place. In my talk, I will present examples for what can be done to remedy this situation with regard to the conditions of a manuscript culture and its variations across different Islamicate societies.