Grounding Theory in Material Objects: An Interview with Dr. Marianna Shreve Simpson

I was fortunate to be able to participate in the Introduction to Islamic Manuscripts class taught by Dr. Marianna Shreve Simpson through the Rare Book School (RBS) in 2019. Simpson has had an extensive career curating, researching and teaching on Islamic art and book arts. She has held curatorships at the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery and the Walters Art Museum, along with a number of other roles. 

RBS offers 5-day courses related to the history of the book on a variety of topics.  The Introduction to Islamic Manuscripts Course was taught once in 2006, and then started being offered again in 2018. Over the course of a week, we learned about the different components of manuscripts with the collection at the Free Library in Philadelphia. 

Besides enjoying the hands-on time with some lovely manuscripts, a big highlight was learning from Simpson! Given that there are limited opportunities to learn about Islamic codicology, or the study of books as material objects, I wanted to hear more about her interventions into this field, as well as her curatorial experiences. 

(Questions prepared by Heather Hughes)

Shreve holding a tiny manuscript (Photo credit: Heather Hughes)

Could you tell us a bit about your background in Islamic Art and Manuscript Studies? How did you get interested in these topics?

I didn’t have any background prior to graduate school. As an undergrad, I was interested in Indian art and East Asian art. I thought I was going to study Chinese art as a grad student at Harvard, but I hadn’t learned Chinese, which was a major problem.  I dithered around for a year, took some classes with Professor Oleg Grabar, including a stimulating seminar on illustrated Persian manuscripts. All I knew about the topic came from an exhibition I had visited in Paris a few years earlier. I thought Persian paintings were really beautiful, but Grabar admonished me: “You know, it’s not just about pretty pictures!” Everyone in the seminar was assigned to study illustrations in a dispersed Shahnama manuscript from 14th century Iran, plus other related works of the period. My assignment involved the illustrations in other 14th century Shahnama manuscripts. I had a summer fellowship to study such images in the Freer Gallery of Art, and one of the museum’s art handlers told me that the collection included a manuscript text block as well as the illustrated folios.  I ended up reconstructing this manuscript (i.e., re-collating the text and illustrated folios), as well as two other 14th century manuscripts for my doctoral dissertation. I was able to discover the order and sequence — essentially the flow– of the manuscripts’ illustrative programs, as well as interact with their materiality. 


In those days in the US, the teaching of Islamic art history focused on the images in manuscripts. There was no concern for codicology, although the field was well developed outside the US. I didn’t even use the word in my dissertation. I subsequently learned about codicology through the scholarly literature on Western manuscripts.

When planning an exhibit, where do you begin? How do you begin to think about what to include and what not to include? What do you hope that attendees learn from your exhibits?

I’ve always begun with collections in my curatorial care (at the Freer/Sackler Galleries and the Walters Art Museum), combined with long-term research interests. My goal is to introduce the public to cultural manifestations that people don’t know much about or what they think they know is “informed” that is, —skewed— by current events. My goal is to expand people’s horizons. 

Two curatorial colleagues and I were planning a large and very ambitious exhibition of Islamic Art, to be called Dar al-Islam and to be held in Washington in 1996 under the joint auspices of the Smithsonian’s Sackler Gallery and the National Museum of African Art. We developed the object list and entered into loan agreements, but at the end of 1995, the museum directors decided to cancel the project because it was going to be logistically complicated.  I think they were also worried about institutional and political pushback.  This was a lost opportunity because there had never been —and still hasn’t been— such a comprehensive exhibition of Islamic art in the US. There have been no lack of special thematic exhibitions, however. Maybe what we were doing was too ambitious, but the research process was very stimulating. 

I’ve been following the offerings at Rare Book School (RBS), and I noticed the Islamic Manuscript Course started being offered again after a long hiatus. What was the impetus for reviving the course? Could you tell us a bit about the class? Any wishes on where to take it in the future?

I did teach the course once in 2006 at the Walters Art Museum while still living in Baltimore. At the time, it was one of the only non-Western course offerings at RBS.  But only three students signed up to take the course. Even though RBS initially seemed to want the subject to be a regular part of its curriculum, there wasn’t a real commitment to diversifying its offerings. In 2017, thanks to new, dynamic leadership, RBS approached me again. It helped, I think, that the course could be based on the extensive collection of Islamic manuscripts at the Free Library of Philadelphia.   

The class is meant to be an introduction, not an overview, of the topic. The most important aim is to spark interest in Islamic manuscripts, and so the class is structured accordingly, examining the distinctive features of bindings, calligraphy, illumination and illustration. I would love to do something in the future on illustrated manuscripts. 

Shreve presiding over a table of manuscripts during the 2019 RBS class (Photo Credit: Heather Hughes)

What do you see as the challenges and gaps in Islamic Manuscript education and training?

Basically, the gaps are due to the fact that it’s not considered a field of study. Within academia, it’s embedded in the field of Islamic Art. While there are short-term programs through the Islamic Manuscript Association, RBS, and a summer conservation and materials workshop taught by Cheryl Porter in Italy at the Montefiascone Conservation Project,  there is no sustained program in Islamic manuscript studies at American or European institutions. The challenge would be to integrate the subject into an overall university curriculum.

Manuscript digitization is changing the way scholars work with manuscripts and increasing accessibility to those who cannot travel to manuscript repositories to do their work. What opportunities do you see with digital surrogates?  What is lost when working solely with a digital manuscript?

One opportunity is access to much more material. Funnily enough, I’ve recently realized what is lost when working with digital manuscripts alone. In preparing a lecture for the Metropolitan Museum of Art last year, and downloading and looking at images, they’re often fuzzy. Whether it’s the text or an image, the digital should always be considered a surrogate. It flattens out the colors. Any appreciation of the manuscript as a material object, the paper, the dimensions, is elusive. There is no substitution for hands-on study. What’s lost is the understanding of the manuscript as a three-dimensional object. At the risk of sounding like a neanderthal, I am only interested in teaching with physical collections. 

What are some of the most interesting objects you’ve worked with, as a researcher, curator, or educator?

Many of the most interesting objects have been volumes of the Shahnama, including the so-called Small Shahnamas (the subject of my doctoral dissertation) and two others from the 14th century, one dated 1330 and the other 1341. Another is the so-called Peck Shahnama dated 1598 at Princeton. The so-called Freer Jami–an illustrated copy of the Haft Awrang by the poet Jami made between 1556 and 1565 for the Safavid prince Sultan Ibrahim Mirza–is another favorite in the Freer Gallery of Art. These works have been the subject of various of my articles and books. Over the years I also have done a lot of research and published articles on a small ceramic beaker, also in the Freer, decorated with scenes related to Shahnama stories. Two copies of the Qur’an also have been of interest:  one written in gold and attributed to the late 8th or early ninth century, and another, much larger volume possibly from 17-18th century India in the Free Library. Manuscripts that were initially made in the 16th century and refurbished in the 20th century—such as a Khamsa of Amir Khosrow Dehlavi belonging to Princeton University—also have fascinated me. 

You have expertise on images in manuscripts. How does one learn about the many different skills it takes to get an image onto the manuscript page?

The making of deluxe manuscripts was always a collective enterprise, involving the work of artists and artisans of many different kinds. I like to imagine the role of the manager of such a project who has many decisions to make, often in consultation with the manuscript’s patron. Among the decisions are the manuscript’s dimensions and size, and what text episodes or scenes in a text should be illustrated. First, however, the text needs to be transcribed, with blank spaces left for the illustrations. Then the folios to be illustrated are passed onto the painter or painters who execute the images, often following familiar compositions.

What projects are you currently working on?

During the pandemic lockdown, I have returned to an old research and publication project on the arts of the book in the Islamic world. But I’ve now given it a new focus thanks to a wonderful book by Christopher de Hamel entitled “Meetings with Remarkable Manuscripts (Penguin, 2019).” The book has 12 chapters, with each focused on a manuscript that the author found transformative. I’d like to do something similar, using individual Islamic manuscripts to highlight specific aspects of the Islamic manuscript arts. I want this publication to be something that could be useful for students and stimulating for colleagues.

What do those who study the visual aspects of manuscripts and those who study the textual elements most stand to learn from each other?

What I learn from my colleagues who work on Arabic, Persian and Turkish literature is not only a better understanding of the text, but also of historical context, including questions of why a text was continuously transcribed, or in a certain place or time. It is both text and context that art historians gain from text scholars. 

Meanwhile, text and literary scholars gain a better understanding of manuscript materiality and production. Literary studies can be extremely abstract and theoretical; art historians help bring theory down to earth, and ground it in the material reality of the object.

Dr. Marianna Shreve Simpson is a visiting scholar at the Schoenberg Institute at the University of Pennsylvania.