Christie's recent sale of a 15th-c. Qur'an ms. lacking transparent info. about its provenance has generated much debate about the legal/ethical dimensions of the sale & trafficking of mss. This is a *thread* about why the preservation of manuscripts & books even matters. 1/n

Firstly, on the legal/ethical issues re the sale/export/import of mss., int'l agreements and nat'l laws re protection of mss., & why transparency re the provenance of mss. matters as much as that of excavated materials see the brilliant @stephenniem here: https://twitter.com/stephenniem/status/1277052227644010497?s=20

As @stephenniem explains, many view mss. (and books more broadly) as somehow excluded from international conventions & domestic laws about the sale/export/import of cultural property. The reasons for this are dubious, however.

As legislation around globe shows, many governing bodies believe the preservation of these materials to be fundamentally important to living communities today. These populations are the inheritors of historical, cultural, & religious traditions that mss. embody & propound.

The larger questions that this discussion raises, in other words, are not only of interest to academics, curators, librarians, auction houses, collectors, & legislators. Manuscripts, rather, are of signal importance to those who claim them as vital parts of their own history.

This point shouldn’t be perceived as particularly controversial since leading institutions around the world have initiatives underway to digitally preserve mss. & related materials under threat of destruction/decay.

Among them is @britishlibrary's Endangered Archives Program, which has funded "400 projects in 90 countries worldwide, in over 100 languages and scripts." The initiatives cover mss., but also other types of archival materials https://eap.bl.uk/ 

To give one example, a 2009 EAP-funded project digitally preserved over 1500 mss. & other materials (audio recordings, posters, photographs, etc.) assoc. w/ Roma cultural heritage in Bulgaria. https://eap.bl.uk/project/EAP285 

The investment in & breadth of EAP, & projects like it, is a testimony to how heavily the int'l community weighs the importance of preserving mss. & related media, both "ancient" & recent, that are under threat. These efforts benefit living communities & scholars/curators alike.

The 13th-c. Zeytun Gospels, folios of which today reside in The Getty, is another case in point. This passage from @stephennie's review of @HeghnarW's excellent book on the ms. summarizes the complex life of this object:

I'll return to the resolution reached btwn The Getty & the Western Prelacy of the Armenian Apostolic Church of America, since it offers a model for the treatment of other "claimed" mss. in museum/library collections, but first more on why the preservation of mss. matters...

Clearly there’s an int'l consensus that mss. & related archival materials are vital for the sustenance of cultures today & past & therefore warrant protection of some kind. But there’s something unique about the materials and structures of mss. that complicates that mission.

Unlike paintings on panel or canvas, many sculptures, or other works of art/cultural heritage, books are comprised of supports that are rolled, folded, and/or bound in ways that make comprehensive study/documentation of their contents challenging.

Remember that Salvator Mundi attributed by some to Leonardo da Vinci, reputed to now be in the hands of Mohammed bin Salman? While a poor substitute for the "real thing," anyone with access to Wiki can download a high-res image of the panel: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/5c/Leonardo_da_Vinci%2C_Salvator_Mundi%2C_c.1500%2C_oil_on_walnut%2C_45.4_%C3%97_65.6_cm.jpg

Well, no such luck with the 15th-c. Qur'an on Ming Chinese paper. You'll find a number of high-res images online, but if you're an academic, curator, librarian, worshipper, &/or art-lover hoping to see images of the ms. in full, there is no depository for such.

Without some kind of access--even digital--to this ms. there’s little we can say about how the object was made and used & created meaning over time. All of this is part of provenance research, but it’s also much more…

Those of us who study & use mss. understand these materials to be fundamental to the formation & preservation of cultural mores & memory. It's not only books' contents--texts, images--but also the evidence of their making & use that helps us to tell these important stories.

To return to the case of the Zeytun Gospels: The court settlement reached in 2015 resulted in the Armenian Apostolic Church of America donating the folios to The Getty on the condition that it acknowledge that the Church had been the rightful owner from the get-go.

The courts also required that the fragments be united with the source manuscript on occasion. The case, in other words, concluded with judgment for both restitution (in name, at least) and restoration (partial or temporary) of the manuscript folios.

But what does the Zeytun Gospel have to do with the 15th-c. Qur'an manuscript that Christie's recently sold for over $8.6 mill.? On the face of it: not much. We have no hard evidence to indicate that the ms. was recently (or since 1970) stolen or illegally exported/imported.

One might also ask to whom the ms.--created in Iran/Central Asia on Ming Chinese paper--rightfully belongs: The descendants of the object's royal patron (yet to be identified)? Its pre-1970 country of origin(s)? Unlike the Zeytun Gospels, this ms. has no clear patrimonial owner…

…or none that we can know for certain, since Christie’s has not been transparent about the object’s provenance, nor has it preserved the ms. digitally to be made available to the broader public.

But even barring the existence of an individual or community that might claim rightful ownership of the Quran ms., the book remains academically and otherwise meaningful to many. I was (& continue to be) moved by Muslims' responses to images of the ms. on Twitter & on Facebook:

I understand that auction houses’ fiduciary duties are to their vendors, above all. Regarding their legal obligations, again see @stephenniem's fantastic thread quoted above. But questions of legality aside, what are their moral obligations?

Short of restituting every consigned manuscript (not just those w/ clear patrimonial claims) to its rightful owner, might auction houses commit to greater public transparency re manuscripts' provenance simply because--as EAP's & @HeghnarW's work show--mss. are vital to humanity?

What if auction houses also committed to contributing to a publicly accessible digital depository of the mss. & printed books they sold? Um, but wouldn't that depress their monetary value, since anyone would be able to download & reproduce images of them?

To that I say: Go ask the above-mentioned Salvator Mundi, whose value has only risen as high-res digital images of it have circulated widely. Or the illustrated folio from the Shah Tahmasp Shahnama that Sotheby's sold in 2011 for 7,433,250 GBP, also available online in high res.

And, finally, might auction houses also make certain conditions barring their resale of mss. purchased at auction and then dismembered? Are there other such commitments that could be made that preclude the existence of domestic or int'l laws?

Manuscripts matter for many reasons, & they matter not only to those individuals & communities that can rightfully claim ownership of them. Legal obligations aside, auction houses can & should do more to preserve mss. & prevent their sale w/out transparent provenance. 29/29