![]() A colophon is typically a brief annotation left by a scribe at the beginning or end of a manuscript. Of all the individual components that make up a manuscript, I have found ‘scribal colophons’ to be some of the most fun and interesting features to explore. Throughout this time, I have enjoyed many fabulous afternoons browsing through the manuscripts preserved in the Leiden University Special Collections, discovering fascinating new details about medieval books every day. Over the past six months I have also worked for Erik Kwakkel as an intern, helping to develop a new website devoted to the medieval manuscript. Thanks to them a whole new world has now opened to me-one filled with scribes, scripts and parchment. It has been a year now since I first fell in love with medieval manuscripts after attending Erik Kwakkel and Jenny Weston’s manuscript course at Leiden University. There are several manuscripts among the HMML collections that contain all or part of the Laughable Stories in both Syriac ( MGMT 00229, CFMM 00441, CFMM 00461, and DCA 00061) and Arabic Garshuni ( MBM 00243, MBM 00254, and CFMM 00246).Giulio is an intern on the ‘Turning Over a New Leaf’ project, and a recent graduate of the Book and Digital Media Studies MA program at the University of Leiden. But many other sayings ring true across time, and some of the jokes still bring a laugh. Many of them may make little sense to modern readers, far removed from the original cultural context. These are only three examples of several hundred sayings and stories collected by Bar Hebraeus. Then the lion said to the fox, “You divide them.” The fox said to him, “The goat will be your breakfast, and the rabbit your lunch, and the stag your supper.” The lion said to him, “Where did you learn this just division?” And the fox said to him, “From the wolf cast down before you, my lord king.” Then the lion said to the wolf, “Divide them among us.” The wolf said, “The goat is yours, the stag is mine, and the rabbit is for the fox.” And when the lion heard this, he became angry, and he jumped on the wolf and choked him. One chapter of the work contains stories of speaking animals, similar in many ways to the stories one might find in Aesop’s Fables: A wolf, a fox, and a lion worked together and trapped a goat, a stag, and a rabbit. ![]() In addition to the “sayings” part of the collection, there are also short stories or parables that, while humorous, are also meant to teach a lesson. ![]() Instead of humor, they provide wisdom, but still in the same short, memorable format: Another said, “What is the worst of all places?” And he replied, “The that has neither abundance nor peace.” Some of the sayings, such as the following one from the “Indian sages,” display a different kind of entertainment. It was said to Diogenes, “Why do you eat in the marketplace?” And he replied, “Because I am hungry in the marketplace.” One saying attributed to the cynic philosopher Diogenes demonstrates the dry wit often associated with him: The first section of the work contains “Profitable sayings of the Greek Philosophers,” and many of the sayings here are attributed to famous philosophers like Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. The following short excerpts provide some insight into the kinds of stories found to be entertaining in the medieval Middle East. Budge produced an English translation of the work in 1897, he refused to translate some of the more offensive ones into English and rendered them into Latin instead! ![]() Many of these sayings and stories are humorous, though some of them are quite crude. The latter thematic sections include (among others) stories of speaking animals, wealthy people, poor people, those who follow “disreputable” career paths, actors and comedians, and thieves and robbers. The first several sections include sayings from various groups: Greek philosophers, Persian sages, Christian ascetics, Muslim kings and sages, Arab ascetics, and physicians (to name just a few). The work itself is divided into sections that categorize the funny stories either by their presumed source or by common theme. Have you ever heard a great joke, but then later when you tried to recount it for someone else, you couldn’t remember it just right? Do you ever find yourself wishing that you wrote down all the funny jokes and stories you’ve heard so that you could deliver them flawlessly whenever the occasion arose? You wouldn’t be the first to create such a resource! The 13th-century polymath Gregory bar Hebraeus compiled a collection of jokes and sayings known by the title Laughable Stories (in Syriac, Tunāyē Mgaḥkānē), and this work circulated widely in both Syriac and Arabic Garshuni. ![]()
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