 Because it is incredibly ethnographically complicated. We move on then to Annabelle Gallop, who is undoubtedly known to many of you already, who runs the South East Asia section in the British Library. So if you want to know anything about the resources on Southeast Asia in the British Library, Annabelle is the person to ask. And if you have any knowledge of any Southeast Asian seals, Annabelle would love to hear about it. Over to you. Thank you very much, William, and thank you, Christina, for organising this wonderful and very exciting conference. Just a little bit of background to my work. As William mentioned, I'm curator at the British Library with responsibility for Maritime Southeast Asia, and I work on Malay manuscripts with a particular interest in documents, chance repractice and seals. But I also recently started working on Quran manuscripts, which historically have attracted almost no interest at all, either from historians or literary scholars, philologists, or even ethnographers, anthropologists. The reason being that the Quran is written in Arabic, which two people who work on Southeast Asia are a foreign language and of less interest than, say, Malay works in Malay or Javanese or Bugis or Tausug or anything, you know, a local language. And secondly, because the text of the Quran never changes, so it's not even as if you're looking at an original work in Arabic created or written or produced by a Southeast Asian. So if scholars in the past, particularly even now have come across the Quran, oh, it's just a Quran and it doesn't tend to even rate for discussion. So I've been looking at Quran obviously not at the text, which doesn't change. You know, that's a different field of study throughout the Islamic world and throughout the centuries, but at the Quran as a book and a material object that completely reflects the culture which created it, in which it was created. And through a study of the material, artistic, visual aspects of Quran manuscripts, you can tell where a manuscript comes from and what it says about influencers, networks, connections of the places which produced it. And so I've, in recent years, been working on Quran manuscripts from the Philippines. Now there's considerable literary evidence scattered over the centuries attesting to the presence of Quran manuscripts in the Southern Philippines and their use in religious life. And in the early 18th century, in particular, there's a reference to Quran manuscripts having been brought into the Philippines by foreign Muslims from Makkah, and the quote is, they bring Quran's in Arabic and instruct them and instruct with them. I mean, it's actually quite, it's very, very rare to get documentary evidence of the presence and passage and movement of Quran manuscripts. So for the whole of Southeast Asia, this is quite an early reference and extremely valuable. A century and a half later, there's a very interesting comment from Sebastian Vidal Isolaire, who noted that each settlement in the Poulangi Valley had a Muslim priest or pandeta who generally had made the pilgrimage to Makkah, and one of his tasks was to recite from the Quran copies of which are guarded with great care since they dated from the 16th and 17th centuries and were heavily written in with commentaries. Again, a very engaged, very detailed report with more information in it than one can glean from many writings in English or Dutch sources for the whole of the rest of maritime Southeast Asia. And I will be returning to this particular comment later and another comment on the quality of the calligraphy in Mindanao. But despite all these comments evoking the central row of Quran manuscripts in religious life in Mindanao, until recently we had no idea what these venerable manuscripts might look like for not a single one had been published. And it's really only in the past decade that through a number of research projects and publications that a number of Quran manuscripts from Mindanao have been documented and to date 17 have been located at present. You can see that 11 of them are held in US collections, four in the Philippines all documented thanks to the work of Professor Midori Kawashima and two in Europe. Now all the known manuscripts in US collections were acquired in conditions of armed conflict only in the first decades of the 20th century and the two in Europe, in Berlin and in Bristol are both known to have been acquired in the 1920s and 30s and might have derived from the same sources. I'm certain that in US collections in particular there must be many more which are undiscovered. The one in Charlottesville for example I just came across by Serendipity on Twitter a few months ago but that's how one finds these things these days. So I described some of these Qurans in two articles published in 2011 looking at Mindanao Quran manuscripts held in US collections which was published in the online journal on Mindanao Our Own Voice and in an article in collaboration with Midori Kawashima in 2012 but at that time my research was entirely based on photographic evidence. I'd been sent digital images and I described the Qurans from those digital images but since then in the intervening years I've been lucky enough to have actually been able to inspect personally nine of these 17 manuscripts in Washington DC, Charlottesville, Bristol and Manila and seeing and handling manuscripts is essential for a better understanding of the material features and so it's really only now I feel in a position to say a bit more authoritatively something about the art of the Quran in Mindanao. So overall Quran manuscripts from Mindanao fit fairly and squarely into the broad family of Quran manuscripts of the Malay world, Maritime Southeast Asia, Nusantara, whatever you like to call it. These manuscripts are all generally rather plain with each page containing around 15 lines of text could be 13, 17 usually an odd number written in black ink and set within ruled text frames verses are separated with small round circles drawn with a compass which may be coloured in. Divisions of the Quranic text into Jews or 30 parts of equal length are often indicated in the margins through a variety of graphic effects and further divisions of the Jews i.e. this 30th division into half quarters and eighths may also be indicated as you can see on the right here. It's the Thunman, it's an eighth of a Jews which is indicated with a nice foliate ornament. So this is the manuscript which is in Virginia, the University of Virginia Library. Now some manuscripts in Quran manuscripts in the southern Philippines as elsewhere in the Malay world have decorated double frames at key locations in the text. These frames usually frame the first two pages, the opening of the Quranic text and this particular manuscript is sort of the archetypal Philippine Quran. It's the Quran of Bayang which is very well known by now. There's a long story about it and I advise you to read Midori's 2012 book for the full story of how this manuscript was captured in Bayang in 1910. I think that's right, 1910, 1908 was something taken to America, spent some decades in Chicago, was returned to Manila, was going to be returned to Mindanao and a storm diverted it. It went into Malacan Young Palace and disappeared from view and after the people power revolution nothing was known of it but it's finally re-emerged and I understand is now designated the national treasure in the National Museum. So these are the opening pages. These key frames are also found sometimes at the end of the manuscript and so this is another manuscript from Mindanao showing the decorated frames at the end and some of the finest or the most well decorated manuscripts have frames in the middle which interestingly is not always in the same location. So this is one of the manuscripts in the Smithsonian. It marks the beginning of the Suratal Isra but in a couple of other manuscripts you find a different Surah in the Quran marked and this is the Suratal Kaaf marked in the middle of the manuscript. Now all these decorated frames that I've shown bear witness to the overarching influence of what in another publication I've called the Sulawesi diaspora geometric style of Quranic manuscript art which is characterised by strictly geometrical constructs using horizontal, vertical and diagonal lines and circles and part circles. So what you don't get is the sort of sinuous lines and ogival archers which you get in many other parts of Southeast Asia. The lines are straight lines and the round bits are sort of geometric circles. The influence of this Sulawesi school is felt all over the Malay archipelago so it's not unique to find the influence in Mindanao and I wouldn't suggest that it speaks of a particularly strong Sulawesi link because you find the Sulawesi influence all over and here's an example of a Quran which was copied in Qedda in 1757 and it's now held in the Sultan's Mosque in Riyau so showing the networks that existed then but also the extent of Sulawesi influence. But nonetheless it was of a special interest in me when Elsa Clavé shared a photograph she had taken of a collection of manuscripts near Davao in Mindanao in 2007 and this Quran manuscript, even though it doesn't show the decorated frames it's recognisably an absolutely standard Sulawesi Quran manuscript of the same ilk as the one in Panyangat now and so it does show that Sulawesi style Qurans were at some time in the past present in Mindanao and so the connections and the influences are quite clear. Visually impressive though some of these Mindanao Qurans are I wouldn't say that there is a distinctive Mindanao style of manuscript illumination rather the Mindanao identity is manifest in certain details and nuances as first outlined in my 2012 article and I have no reason to change that opinion now namely a particular emphasis on the vegetal scroll, the foliate scroll you see filling in the borders around the text and this emphasis on the scroll motif is perhaps sort of more marked in Mindanao than elsewhere in South East Asia. There are certainly occasional unusual features for example in this manuscript in the Smithsonian I think this is one of the finest examples of decorated frames I've seen from Mindanao we see some ornaments in solid black pigment now that's absolutely very unusual indeed I've never seen it anywhere else in South East Asia where it's black is usually only present in the form of black ink to outline other sort of coloured elements. Another very small decorative motif which is so far only seen in Mindanao is even in sort of rather simpler Qur'an's occasional placement of tendrils or foliate motifs in the corners of the decorated frame so that's another what you could call a Mindanao feature. However in this presentation I'd like to focus on some more strikingly unique features of Mindanao Qur'an manuscripts which relate to the materiality and use of the book rather than its decoration. Now the first of this is covers of solid pieces of wood jointed by means of small drilled holes through which string is threaded to hold the pieces of wood together. So this is unique in Southeast Asia no other Southeast Asian manuscript tradition has manuscripts with covers of solid wood apart from say buttock manuscripts but I'm talking about the Islamic manuscript tradition and Qur'an manuscripts so this is the same example which is opened out and you can see how the string is threaded through the holes and this particular example in Virginia has got some decorative motifs on it. So far there are four of these manuscripts out of these 17 are definitely known to have wooden covers because the covers are not joined to the manuscript they work as a protective outer cover it's entirely possible that many more had these covers which have now been lost but these are the other three examples so the manuscript in Bristol at the top and you can see also the joints and the threads here. One these two are in Mindanao this is now covered with a cloth wrapper and this sad in a very sorry state a very important Qur'an which is now in total fragments but it still has its cover. Anyway so that is a unique feature of Mindanao Qur'an manuscripts. The other distinctive feature I'd like to focus on relates to the paper used. Most Southeast Asian Qur'an manuscripts are written on high quality European paper although in Java you do get Dluang which is a locally made paper from the beaten bark of the mulberries tree but of the Mindanao Qur'ans only three of the 17 are written on European paper four are written on Chinese paper. Now Chinese paper is and was very widely used in Southeast Asia it's not watermarked like European paper so it's more difficult to identify but one of the most characteristic features is the presence of visible brush strokes across the surface because the paper was made in the Chinese method elsewhere using an aqueous solution and a paper mould on which sheets of paper were formed from the aqueous solution. When the paper drained out the paper was lifted and pasted against a wall using brushes it was pasted onto a wall to dry and what you can see these kind of striations are the strokes from the brush in the drying process and it's one of the key features of which identify paper as Chinese paper and so that's quite a useful way of finding out but what we also find in some manuscripts from Mindanao is Chinese paper stamps and these are the marks of the Chinese paper maker and Midori has found these in other non-Kuranic manuscripts in Mindanao and this is the means by way I found this Quran in Virginia because there was a Twitter conversation about these Chinese paper stamps and interestingly enough you never get as you know a figural decoration in Chinese paper stamps in Quran manuscripts but it just so happens that the golden lion seal is stamped on this Quran which I think makes it one of only two exceptions I've ever found of a figural illustration in a Quran manuscript but the most interesting finding in terms of paper is that over half nine of the 17 manuscripts of Quran manuscripts in Mindanao are written on what appears to be a locally made fibrous paper now this is very important because to date there has been no evidence at all of the making of paper in any Islamic manuscript culture in Southeast Asia Javanese paper, the dluwang which I mentioned earlier technically does not qualify as paper because it's not made from an aqueous solution it's simply sheets of tree bark which are pounded and polished until they form a writing surface but the definition of paper is a writing support made from an aqueous solution which is then made into sheets and dried and so it seems to be that in the Philippines is the only Islamic manuscript culture in Southeast Asia which made paper even in a recent book on paper in the Philippines by Thomas I've only seen references to the 20th century making of paper but these manuscripts date at least to the 18th, 19th century and possibly even earlier so I think there's really a big area of study there it's quite crude, you can see the surface it's very fibrous but you can also see the shape of the mould but you can actually see the lines of the mould and once you know what you're looking for it's then very easy to identify it when you come across it so finally the last aspect I would like to talk about in these Quran manuscripts is they bear witness to a very close engagement with the text so Sebastian Vidal mentioned heavily written in with commentaries and there certainly many of the Quran's have quite a lot of annotation you get showing, testifying to a close reading of the text when words have been left out you can see they've been inserted or sometimes the spelling is corrected when it hasn't been correct before the other thing that the manuscripts testify to is despite the very poor condition they are found in today no doubt related to the fact that they were captured in armed conflict many of the manuscripts show signs of very great care and efforts at restoration and repair in the past you can see that these old tears have been sewn to repair them in this manuscript and this is in a different manuscript so it's sewing repairs was obviously one technique that was used another technique that was used was pasting over tears so in this manuscript on the left hand side you can see a tear which is now made whole because on the right hand side this is the reverse of the same folio a paper patch has been put there and fixed with adhesive and presumably the adhesive was white or transparent at the time but it has now blackened, it's probably some sort of resin-less adhesive and you see this feature in many manuscripts many evidence of repairing manuscripts manuscripts of course do get battered and pages get lost especially from the beginning so another thing you can see in a number of these Quran manuscripts is the replacement of pages, especially at the beginning so this is a very fine Quran which has lost about five pages at the beginning and these have been restored in a much less competent hand but nonetheless it shows you that this Quran was designed to be red whole and even the replacement pages, one of them was decorated it's lost the first page, this would have been the left hand side of a main page and the same situation, so it doesn't just happen once but in the Quran from Bristol you can see those are the original pages of the bulk of the Quran on the left and the additional and the new replacement first two pages which have been added on so I'm coming to the end now and I'm going back to the quote by Sebastian Vidal about he mentioned Qurans dating from the 16th and 17th century now no Quran in Southeast Asia has yet been identified from the 16th century even the 17th century is very early most of the Qurans I've shown you here probably date from the 19th or 18th century but there's one manuscript in the Smithsonian that seems to be on paleographic grounds from the appearance of the handwriting alone to be considerably older than the others the decorative elements are later editions but the hand itself bears some resemblance to Javanese Quran manuscripts of the 17th century and this is another heavily repaired manuscript with lots of later editions so in conclusion, Mindanaw Quran sit firmly within the larger family of Southeast Asian Quran manuscripts but there are certain unique aspects of the material culture and the books themselves bear witness to particularly careful usage and care through the centuries with evidence of repair and restoration but finally I'd like to reflect that just ten years ago not a single Quran from Mindanaw had yet been published but today that same complete dearth of information applies to Sulu not a single Quran manuscript from Sulu is known I don't know what they look like I'm going to find that they're similar to Mindanaw Quran or reflecting a completely different tradition so we live in hope so much has been found in the past ten years and we look forward to more coming up in the future thank you so if any of you know of any Qurans please contact Annabel yes a quick question at the back as we change over in contemporary usage in Indonesia Pandeta tends to refer more to a Christian priest so I would simply need to go back into the context I'm not suggesting that the holy men themselves used that word but it was applied to them but it's a lone word in Malay which is the lingua franca of the whole of the archipelago but it would be interesting to work out its first usage to see whether it was applied generically to priests of any of the great religions or whether it was when the meaning sort of began to travel Muslims in Champa in Vietnam use the term Guru so we get this as well this migration of terms