On June 21, 2023, Matthew Keegan, Moinian Assistant Professor of Asian and Middle Eastern Cultures, received a grant to research Islamic scholarly manuscripts. Professor Keegan’s research will make up part of Paratexts Seeking Understanding, a £2.4 million project recently launched by the University of Glasgow, in partnership with the Chester Beatty Museum in Dublin and funded by the Templeton Religion Trust.
The project aims to gain a better understanding of manuscripts and knowledge in multiple religions, and Professor Keegan’s research in particular will explore how Muslim scholars in the 12th and 13th centuries added paratextual elements to the texts they read. To accomplish this, Professor Keegan is examining a 12th-century copy of a 10th-century work entitled The Exegesis of Rare Words in the Quran, in which one of the attested students was Saladin’s nephew, who was both a prince and a scholar. Professor Keegan’s contributions to Paratexts Seeking Understanding project will enter into dialogue with the research of his colleagues and other world-leading experts from Scotland, England, Ireland, France, Spain, Germany, and Australia.