Documents & Histoire / Documents & History. Le faux, le simulacre et la copie. Islam viie-xxe s. / The Fake, the Replica, & the Copy. Islam 7th–20th C.

The ten studies that make up this book refuse the polar opposition of the true and the false, and reject the persistent idea that the copy is a mimetic equivalent of the original. They begin an inventory of the ambiguous cases that are ranged between true and false. Neither non-being, nor non-object, the fake and its inflection, the unfaithful copy, do not exist by default, but are the object of these contributions, grouped as: Fakes and their Makers, Original & Copy, Authorship, Fabrications, Fake Strategies, Beyond the Real & the Fake. Taking us beyond antonymy, they re-interrogate the notions of illusion, tradition, authenticity and legality, by placing them in literary, historical, social, anthropological and cultural contexts. The texts, illuminations and materiality of the works in question will take you from Europe and the Middle East to Asia and Africa, from Arabic, Arab-ʿaǧamī and Judeo-Persian manuscripts to medieval Arabic coins and African masks.