Identifying Scribal Hands: A Few Notes on Christian Sogdian Manuscript Fragments Coming From Turfan

During late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages the oasis of Turfan was home to an important Christian Sogdian community. Our knowledge of this community derives almost entirely from fragmentary manuscripts written in Sogdian, Syriac and Uighur. Due to the fragmentary character of the manuscripts as well as to the nearly total lack of colophons, very little is known about the scribal activity in this community. A comprehensive analysis of the scribal hands based on the entire Christian material coming from Turfan, i.e. an analysis of the available documentation in all three languages, Sogdian, Syriac and Uighur, is still a desideratum.
After a short survey on the state of the art, this paper discusses potential indicators for different scribal hands in the Christian manuscript fragments in Sogdian language. The last section aims at linking the results thus obtained to evidence from the Syriac and Uighur manuscript fragments, focusing on few but significant examples.
Therefore, the present paper intends to make a further step, definitely not complete, towards a better understanding of the persons, places and methods involved in the production of the Christian Sogdian texts, and hence of this Eastern Middle Iranian Christian community in general.