353 STYLISTIC FEATURES OF FOURTH/TENTH- CENTURY ARABIC COLOPHONS, WITH PARTICULAR ATTENTION TO SCRIBAL BIOGRAPHICAL DETAILS F. REDHWAN KARIM & YOUSRY ELSEADAWY MARKFIELD INSTITUTE OF HIGHER EDUCATION INTRODUCTION Colophons are one of the few places in Arabic manuscripts where we can extract information to understand more about scribes who undertook such crucial work. The earliest colophons date from the third/ninth century. Prior to this, we do not have any examples to draw upon from the manuscript tradition. The reason for this quite possibly relates to the fact that at this earlier period, they were not yet a well- established scribal tradition. What links with this is the fact that most books prior to this period were aide-memoirs of scholars for their personal use in audition ses- sions. 1 The structure of the earliest colophons that have been previously studied are relatively simple. In many cases, colophons from the third/ninth century merely bear a statement of completion, a line that states that the book is completed. In the fourth/tenth century, further, yet still basic, information can be found. Here scribes sometimes also state their name and the date they completed their copying. 2 Such brief pieces of information are precious in allowing us to understand at least a little into the lives of these scribes. However, this crucial period in the study of colophons has been hitherto un- derstudied. A few notable exceptions include Ramazan Şeşen’s general article on 1 See, Gregor Schoeler, The Oral and the Written in Early Islam, trans. Uwe Vagelpohl (Lon- don: Routledge, 2006); Gregor Schoeler, The Genesis of Literature in Islam: From the Aural to the Read (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2009). 2 Ramazan Şeşen, ‘Esquisse d’une Histoire Du Développement Des Colophons Dans Les Man- uscrits Musulmans’, in Scribes et Manuscrits Du Moyen-Orient, ed. François Déroche and Fran- cis Richard (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale de France, 1997), 193–94.