Abstract
An illustrated page preserved in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York has equally attracted and puzzled a number of art historical attempts at interpreting the texts and images found on them. It has been identified as the fragment of an otherwise unknown text called “The language of wild animals” (Manṭiq al-waḥš) by the well-known early Islamic traditionist Kaʿb al-Aḥbār. Its nature as the remnant of a book has been both declared and doubted at the same time and by the same researchers. The confusion stems from a misunderstanding of what it actually is that we can see and read on it. This talk will correct some misconceptions about the nature of the page and its codicological place. It will also ask what this artefact may tell us about a possible tradition of illustrated books in the Fatimid period that may have been all but lost in the following centuries. With that in mind, it will finally ponder the mechanisms by which books, and illustrated books in particular, get lost.
