In the margin

Knowledge grows through its readers

Ḥāshiyeh-nevīsī—writing in the margin—makes a reader’s understanding visible beside a text. An explanation, a question, or an alternative reading gives the next reader another way into the work. The page carries both the text and traces of its reception.

In the Persian Peck Shahnama, marginal notes explain unfamiliar words and preserve alternative verses. Louise Marlow describes how these additions helped later readers encounter the poem through their own language and experience. Read the Princeton essay ↗

From personal understanding to shared knowledge

I see a connection here with knowledge management: making an insight explicit, keeping it connected to its source, and allowing others to revisit and develop it. This is a contemporary way of reading the practice, rather than a claim that it was the same as the modern discipline.

For me, the margin is also an invitation to keep a scientific notebook: to connect ideas, question assumptions, and make interpretations open to discussion. It speaks to my interest in normative systems, where the relationship between a rule, its interpretation, and the reasons for applying it matters.