The first edition of The Technique of Islamic Bookbinding appeared in 2015. The fact that it sold out within three years encourages me to think that it met the needs of various groups of professionals working with Islamic manuscripts, for which I am grateful. Until then, the material and technical aspects of bound volumes had not been addressed in any detail; nor was it obvious that so much information could be gleaned from the artefacts as material witnesses. The Technique of Islamic Bookbinding also proposed a controlled technical vocabulary, an absolute prerequisite when discussing the physical objects and describing them in such a way that the distinctive features and characteristic elements receive individual attention. These terms proved to be useful in training and teaching, in cataloguing and digitisation projects, and also to conservators working with manuscripts from the Islamic world.
A growing interest in the field of Islamic manuscript studies has since stimulated further research. In this revised and updated second edition of The Technique of Islamic Bookbinding I have much profited from the results of several new and interesting studies. In addition, I had the privilege of conducting a more in-depth study of Islamic endband techniques and I had the opportunity to survey the Yemeni manuscripts in the Leiden University Libraries collections, which hopefully led to some useful observations. More prominently, in this second edition the terms and definitions have been revised, following the substantial update of Terminology for the Conservation and Description of Islamic Manuscripts, compiled by Paul Hepworth and myself, prior to its official launch on the new web address [http://hepworthscheper.com/terminology.html].
In the past few years the Islamic book has gained a more prominent position in the field of book and paper conservation. At international conferences, manuscripts from the Islamic world have found a natural place among the topics of interest. In the West, several conservation training programmes have started to include topics relating to paper and book objects from the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Young professionals and book conservation students are showing a keen interest in this particular area, acknowledging the need to respectfully approach any bookbinding tradition without preconceived ideas, while gaining a foothold in a vast field that offers so much to explore. These developments are as encouraging as they are necessary.
Given the increase in studies on various preservation or conservation aspects of manuscripts from the Islamic world, it is hardly surprising that the latest contributions concerning the materiality of Islamic manuscripts are made by conservators such as myself. The hands-on work with the physical objects offers unique opportunities to examine the artefacts. Examples of research subjects recently addressed are Andalusi binding structures, Yemeni manuscripts, early Islamic codices and the development of their construction, the practice of interleaving in different parts of the Islamic world and further studies into historic repairs. References to these new studies are included in this edition.
As we are learning from the books and one another, we are jointly building a new framework of knowledge. I look forward to your comments and criticism.
Leiden, June 2018