The Week in Links

This one's a little late, but I was pleased to have found it this week. I saw this performance of Arabic shadow-puppet plays in April. And while I was please that medieval Arabic theater was finding a performance outlet, even without the text in front of me, I thought that the translations were really problematic. Far be it from me to criticize translators who have to make certain choices, but it was the nuance that must have been there in the original text was so flattened out; I kept finding myself thinking, "this is probably really funny in Arabic." This review deals with another set of problems in the performance: "Throughout the conversation, there seemed to be an implied equation at work that obscene means secular."  I had to leave to catch the train back to Philadelphia before the Q&A was over. I'm kind of sorry I missed it, but kind of not:

First as Shadow, then as Farce

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Has YBZ taken over publishing the Genizah series? Or are people just not publishing with Brill if they can at all avoid it? In any case, two new Genizah books out from YBZ. And if I may just be permitted: Woo hoo! The Halfon archive has *finally* been published!

The Weekday Amidah in Cairo Genizah Prayerbooks

The India Book, vol. 4

This new digital Genizah project looks smashing:

The Rabat Genizah Project

Project Narrative

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This highly polemical argument against digitization (or, rather, digitisation, since it appears in the TLS) has generated a lot of conversation on Twitter and in real life. Yes, there is value to learning from the real things, but better digital than nothing, no?

Back to the Real?

And if you needed any proof that digitization is both good and good for scholarship, take a look at this, which is part of the Endangered Archives Project at the British Library, the target of most of the vitriol in the previous piece:

Historical collections of manuscripts located at Al-Jazzar mosque library in Acre


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Who is going to reshelve all of these?

World Record-Breaking Domino Chain Falls

Why bother resolving, though, when you can just throw out everything that was published before 2003?

Do you read any of the books you weed?