Traveling Scholars and Their Audition Certificates: An Interpretation of the Status of Late Ayyubid Aleppo (624–658/1227–1260) as a Center of Knowledge​

The scholarly environments outside the main centers of knowledge of the early thirteenth century—Damascus, Cairo and Baghdad—are understudied areas in the scholarship on the intellectual history on this period. The study of audition certificates can give detailed information on many known and unknown scholars. However, these sources were scattered across the many manuscript collections all over the world. With the launch of the Audition Certificate Platform, many audition certificates have been made accessible. This makes it possible to survey large numbers of audition certificates. With these sources available, it is possible to reconstruct the scholarly networks of the less studied centers of knowledge. Aleppo is one of these centers, and many audition certificates from the Ayyubid period of this city have survived. This study will use these sources to get insights in the role that Aleppo played in the transmission of ḥadīṯ sciences in the late Ayyubid period (624–658/1227–1260).