DOI: 10.25592/uhhfdm.13524
title: Audition Certificates Platform

description: Audition certificates (سماع, طبقة السماع or إجازة) are a salient feature of Arabic manuscript cultures. They are notes written on a book to document the authorised transmission of the book’s text from teacher(s) to student(s). In concrete terms, the text was read out aloud (by the teacher or one of the students) and at the end of the reading session one of the members of this reading group added the audition certificate to the book. By virtue of their participation all students now had the right to act as teacher in future reading sessions.

Audition certificates are brimming with data and can include: the name of the teacher(s), student(s) (including highlighting those coming late or leaving early), the reader, the writer of the certificate, the book’s owner; in addition to the date of the reading, the place of the reading and many other surprises (such as a writer recording the birth of his son during the reading session in the room next door). These certificates contain a wealth of historical data, particularly on individuals who are not found in many other sources. They are thus a source of outstanding importance for fields such as social history, history of ideas, economic history, urban history, historical topography, and biographical studies. It goes without saying that, especially in a comparative perspective with other world regions, such as Latin Europe, this copious material represents a considerable resource for widening our understanding of Middle Eastern societies. 

ACP is the first major open-access project to unlock the potential of this data.  We have started reviewing the holdings of selected libraries (such as Staatsbibliothek Berlin, Forschungsbibliothek Gotha, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Syrian National Library, Aşir Efendi Library Istanbul, Leiden University Libraries, and the Khalidi Library/Jerusalem). Still, we cannot claim to have identified all the audition certificates in the manuscript books on their shelves. We will continue to collect additional materials to expand this first large-scale, fully searchable corpus of audition certificates. 

https://www.audition-certificates-platform.org/

Version 1.0 (launched 26.10.2023) contained 3524 annotated Audition Certificates (369 locations, 42.089 person annotations);

version 2.0 (launched 15.03.2024) contained 4035 annotated Audition Certificates (399 locations, 49.275 person annotations);

version 3.0 (launched 19.10.2024) contained 4643 annotated Audition Certificates (430 locations, 58.468 person annotations); 

version 4.0 (launched 06.06.2025) contained 5143 annotated Audition Certificates (470 locations, 64.791 person annotations);

version 5.0 (launched 01.12.2025) contains 5560 annotated Audition Certificates (483 locations, 71.084 person annotations).

 
description: The research for this project was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany's Excellence Strategy – EXC 2176 'Understanding Written Artefacts: Material, Interaction and Transmission in Manuscript Cultures', project no. 390893796. The research was conducted within the scope of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) at Universität Hamburg.