Based on a corpus coming from the Turfan oasis (in present-day Xinjiang, People's Republic of China) and consisting of Christian Middle Iranian literature in several languages (Middle Persian, Syriac and Sogdian) and scripts (East Syriac, Pahlavi and secular Sogdian), the present paper is aimed at identifying and outlining the translation techniques for the transmission of religious knowledge, based on a literary tradition as well as on a manuscript tradition, from one context to another. The religious knowledge is that which belongs to the "Church of the East" and which is written in its official liturgical language, i.e. Syriac in East Syriac script. The general context is that of the missionary activities of the "Church of the East" along the Silk road between late Antiquity and early Middle Age. The particular context is that of the converted Iranian communities.

Mitteliranische Handschriften, pt. 4: Iranian Manuscripts in Syriac Script in the Berlin Turfan Collection. By Nicholas Sims-Williams. Verzeichnis der orientalischen Handschriften in Deutschland, vol. 18, 4. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2012. Pp. 249.

The present contribution serves two purposes. First, it highlights the quire numbering system as reflected in the Christian Sogdian (in East Syriac script) and Syriac manuscript fragments from the Turfan Collection (Berlin) and the Krotkov Collection (St. Petersburg). The main aim of this part is to offer a tentative typology of the numbering of quires. It shows that not only the Syriac manuscript tradition of the Church of the East, but also the Christian Palestinian Aramaic manuscript tradition offers important clues for understanding this material. Second, this study inserts itself into a trajectory of Manuscript Studies that combines codicology and palaeography with history and cultural history in order to shed light on the social aspects of the production and consumption of manuscripts, and on the dissemination of particular technical aspects between Mesopotamia and Central Asia during late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages.

This contribution is intended to relate the study of the Christian Sogdian manuscript fragment tradition, the least investigated of all those belonging to the Christian Orient during late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, to the codicological principles developed within much better documented manuscript traditions, whether fragmentary or not. In establishing this necessary link, theoretical assumptions and practical implications are discussed.