How Were So Many Arabic Authors So Prolific?

This lecture focuses on the size of the Arabic tradition (ca. 700-1500), and the likely role that written practices and cultural expectations played in its development. It is arguably the largest written tradition up to its day, rivalled only by medieval Chinese. I focus, first, on recent work assembling a corpus of 1.3 billion words and the composition of this corpus, including the large number of sizable works. I consider these works in light of evidence for a much larger body of no-longer extant material. Second, I introduce the concept of text “reuse,” our method for detecting and measuring it, and my theory. The theory is this: that the substantial reuse of earlier works resulted both in the emergence of very large works, especially from the 10th century onwards, and secondly, that this reuse resulted in the loss of earlier texts, now absorbed in various ways (including abridgement) into larger ones. Finally, I examine the cultural expectations underpinning reuse, and also how they should make us reconsider, at different times and places, notions of the “book” and “authorship.”