Mystery in the Archives

One afternoon last November, Joe Lucia and the 11 other students in the Islamic Art and Architecture course met in a drab corner of the ground floor of the Walsh Library, the inconspicuous home of the University Archives at Seton Hall University.A few months earlier, rare books historian Todor Petev had discovered two boxes there, each holding about 20 loose pages from old Islamic manuscripts. Petev selected half that he found particularly interesting — for their age, place of origin, or religious significance — and it was these that his students had come to see. For the ever-curious Lucia, now a junior, the ancient leaves would lead to some remarkable discoveries, and a taste for life as an art historian.Read more at...Seton Hall Magazine, Fall 2009.