Dr Ani Avetisyan, Rothschild Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Middle Eastern Studies, has recently published a book titled “Arabic, Judaeo-Arabic, and Garshuni Versions of Ibn al-Akfānī’s Treatise on Bloodletting”.
What can one eighteenth-century Judaeo-Arabic medical manuscript reveal about language, knowledge, and scribal practice? In this book, you follow MS 1751, an extraordinary, little-studied volume from the Matenadaran, through its linguistic layers and textual transformations. You see how its orthography, morphology, and syntax shift across Arabic, Judaeo-Arabic, and Garshuni versions, and how these changes illuminate broader patterns of vernacular usage in the early modern Middle East. Drawing on unpublished material and detailed textual criticism, the book restores the earliest treatise in the manuscript and uncovers the networks that shaped its transmission. This study offers a rare, compelling window into medical writing and manuscript culture.
Congratulations to Ani on the publication of her work, which also follows success in the Leverhulme Early Career Fellowship, which Ani will start later this year.
