2013.12.24 | Adam Gacek. Arabic Manuscripts: A Vademecum for Readers. Leiden: Brill, 2011. xviii + 350 pages (with 216 ill. and 3 charts). ISBN 9789004221444.
Review by W. Andrew Smith, Shepherds Theological Seminary.
Many thanks to Brill for providing a review copy.
If the term vademecum is unfamiliar, it refers to a handbook that is carried around at all times for consultation (from the modern Latin “go with me”). With that in mind, Adam Gacek’s Arabic Manuscripts: A Vademecum for Readers most certainly qualifies as a guide that should be kept readily at hand by scholars interested in various aspects of the study of manuscripts. Gacek, who is a retired lecturer in Islamic Manuscript Studies from McGill University, introduces the vademecum with the qualifier that it is not intended to be a comprehensive manual, but rather “an aid to students and researchers” (xi).
Biblical and Early Christian Studies 