Verena Klemm: “At the High End of Learning: Note-Taking and Commentary Practices of a Nineteenth-Century Ismaili Scholar in India”

Abstract

In nineteenth-century India, the Ismaili scholar Muḥammad al-Hamdānī (d. 1315/1898) selected passages from previous works of various disciplines based on his interests, at times adding his own notes, and compiled his own private notebook. Verena Klemm analyses this notebook with the approach of multilayered note-taking, namely a consideration of the excerpts and notes of the central text and the annotations in the margins. Her classification of the marginalia and her analysis of their content show al-Hamdānī’s interest in tracing the transmission of works and his engagement with their content by selecting, commenting, collating, and complementing. Through these multilevel commentarial gestures of note-taking – excerpts and supplemental material in the centre and commentarial notes in the margin – the intellectual work of the scholar can be followed. 

Verena Klemm: “At the High End of Learning: Note-Taking and Commentary Practices of a Nineteenth-Century Ismaili Scholar in India,” in Marginal Matters. Explorations into Commenting and Glossing Techniques in Arabic Manuscript Cultures, ed. Stefanie Brinkmann, Leiden and Berlin: Brill Publishers, 2025, 125-148.

The volume is open access