Question

What are the difficulties faced by historians in using manuscripts?

Answer 1

Hint: Historians rely on many different sources like coins, inscriptions, manuscripts, archives and textual records for information, but due to change in time the variety of records also changed. The major problem or difficulties faced by historians was that all these records were written by hand.

Complete answer: Manuscripts were handwritten compositions on cloth, metal, paper, bark etc and were used by wealthy people, monasteries, rulers and temples. They were placed in libraries and archives. They were important sources of information about the rulers and their dynasties. People in the middle of the 13th to 14th century started using paper widely; they used to write holy texts, letters, chronicles of rulers, teachings of saints, judicial records, accounts and taxes etc. However, it is difficult for historians to use them.
The major difficulty was that they were written by hand as there were no printing presses in those days. It was difficult for historians to guess what was written in them. Scribes who copied manuscripts often made small changes by replacing words and sentences, these changes grew over centuries which resulted in changing the same text entirely. This was the serious problem as historians have to read multiple manuscripts of the same text to understand the original meaning of it because finding the original manuscript was also difficult.

Note: Another problem of using manuscripts was different kinds of handwriting used in it. Persian and Arabic had different styles of writing which were difficult to understand.