Activities

Arabic literature of the Ottoman period (16^th through 19^th centuries) is often perceived through the lens of decline and stagnation, processes presumably brought about by extraneous forces like European Orientalist and Ottoman imperialist exploitations. This talk instead looks at Constantinople as an integral part of the history of Arabic literature. Nowhere can this transplanted tradition be found as abundantly as in modern Istanbul, the former capital of the Ottoman Empire. The libraries its elites established throughout the centuries of Ottoman rule provided the Arabic literary tradition with unmatched stability and longevity, often up to this day. Where did those books come from? How did they migrate to the Ottoman capital? And what did this mean for the intellectual development of the Arab world?

In the centre of this endeavour is a detailed analysis of the life, career, and collecting of Abū Bakr b. Rustam al-Širwānī (d. 1135/1723). As the sometime head of the empire’s administration, he was able to amass a book collection of unsurpassed textual breadth, historical depth, and rarity. As an immigrant to the city, he resembled many of the manuscript volumes he assembled there. Unlike many libraries of his peers, who locked them down in endowments, al-Širwānī’s books were dispersed after his death and are now found around the globe, allowing us to follow their paths further, also to Dublin. Al-Širwānī is a prime example for dedicated bibliophilia that, at the same time, stands for larger developments. Efforts like his safeguarded a tradition and shaped the way in which we encounter it today.

ʿAbdallāh b. Zayn al-Dīn al-Buṣrawī (1097/1685-1170/1756), a native of Constantinople, was one of Damascus’s preeminent legal scholars during the 18^th century. Among the city’s learned elite, al-Buṣrawī stands out today not so much for his scholarship but for his library, a substantial part of which has been identified. Its fate, reportedly being scattered due to its owner’s generosity already during his lifetime, is recorded in general terms by the biographer al-Murādī. But a review of the surviving volumes allows us to make a more substantial assessment of the book market and the literary environment in an important Arab province of the Ottoman Empire.

Al-Buṣrawī built up his collection during a period in which the libraries of the Arabic provinces are believed by many to have been impoverished, both by the bibliophile appetites of the Ottoman elite and the emergence of European buyers. Furthermore, the intellectual life of a city like Damascus is said to have been dominated by a textual reliance on second-rate commentaries rather than recourse to ‘classical’ works. This case study will critically evaluate both claims.

From 24 October 2025 to 1 March 2026, the Chester Beatty Library presents the exhibition “Manuscripts & Mind. How we read & respond to the written word” in collaboration with the international and interdisciplinary project Mapping the Margins (University of Glasgow and Templeton Religious Trust). Manuscript experts and cognitive scientists examine how people engage with religious texts through the complex network of paratexts—titles, design, punctuation, and annotation—found in the Chester Beatty’s collection of Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, Jewish, and Samaritan books, all of which are on display in this exhibition.

Stefanie Brinkmann examined MS CBL, Ar. 4326, a densely annotated manuscript with al-Baghawī’s hadith collection Maṣābīḥ al-sunna (dated 642/1245). The cognitive experiments took place in cooperation with the cognitive scientist  Mirza Iqbal, Glasgow University, and Asma Hilali, Lille University. S. Brinkmann has written all exhibition texts related to this manuscript, the chapter in the catalogue, and drafted a film on the manuscript which is shown on the exhibition.

Link to the exhibition 

Link to the film under “Research Project: Paratexts in Chester Beatty Manuscripts”.

“Islamic manuscripts are often heavily annotated, reflecting the vivid interaction between the user and the text. In this lecture, we will explore the fascinating role of marginal and interlinear annotations in manuscripts of Qur’ānic readings and prophetic traditions, focusing on their historical, textual, and cultural significance. From scribbled classroom notes to carefully placed glosses: These annotations offer valuable insights into the intellectual history of Islam.”

The presentation was part of the lecture series “Let’s Talk about Paratexts” (April 2025 – September 2026), a hybrid series of talks hosted by the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin.

The lecture series is the result of a cooperation between the project cluster Mapping the Margins (Glasgow University, and Templeton Religious Trust) and the Chester Beatty Library, and accompanies the exhibition “Manuscripts & Mind. How we read and respond to the written word” at the Chester Beatty Library.

Mapping the Margins (2024-2026) studies paratexts in different manuscript cultures of religious texts, trying to understand how people understood and perceived these texts in manuscripts. To this end, manuscript experts cooperate with cognitive scientists from the University of Glasgow. The manuscripts examined are all held at the Chester Beatty Library.

Stefanie Brinkmann is consultant in the sub-project “Words upon Words” of Prof. Dr. Asma Hilali (University of Lille). She has analysed a manuscript of al-Baghawī’s Maṣābīḥ al-sunna (Chester Beatty Library, Ms Ar. 4326, dated 642/1245). Asma Hilali’s research is dedicated to Ibn Khālawayh’s Kitāb al-badīʿ fī uṣūl qirā’āt al-Qur’ān (CBL, Ar. 3051). Both manuscripts are shown at the exhibition “Manuscripts & Mind. How we read and respond to the written word”.

Link to the paratext project Mapping the Margins 

Link to the programme of the lecture series 

Link to the exhibition at the Chester Beatty Library

The presentation was given at the workshop “Circulation, Collection, and Cultural Dynamics of Islamic Manuscripts in the Pre-Modern Islamic World (8 – 16^th c.)”, 24 – 26 September, 2025, in Toledo, organised by Bruno de Nicola (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna) and Ignacio Sánchez (Escuela de Traductores, Toledo).

This presentation focuses on the lesser-known scholar Zayn al-ʿArab, who hailed from Mamluk Egypt and was active in Ilkhanid and post-Ilkhanid Azerbaijan and Anatolia. Through the analysis of manuscripts of his commentary on al-Baghawī's hadith collection Maṣābīḥ al-sunna, as well as a few other works, the presentation traces his movements within the Mongol territories and his editorial work on the Maṣābīḥ al-sunna. The study of the manuscripts includes an analysis of the various prefaces to his commentary, colophons, collation notes, title pages, and more. The prefaces demonstrate Zayn al-ʿArab’s ongoing study of the Maṣābīḥ and his discussions with students, colleagues, and scholars of other schools of thought. In the end, this resulted in three different versions of his commentary. Although Zayn al-ʿArab possibly never returned to Egypt, it was his son, Muḥammad, who transmitted his father's works, as well as al-Baghawī's Maṣābīḥ al-sunna, at the Shaykhūniyya madrasa in Cairo, as it is attested in a few colophons.

See the full programme here

Daniel Kinitz: "Bibliotheca Arabica: Arabographische Texterkennung von Referenzwerken – Herausforderungen beim Einsatz Deep-Learning-basierter Anwendungen".

Vortrag beim Panel "DH @ MENA(-LIB.)" der der Universität Bochum und des FID Nahost im Rahmen des Digital Humanities Days an der Ruhr-Universität Bochum (RUB), 16.09.2025.

The Bibliotheca Arabica team presented a panel under the title “Towards a New History of Arabic Literature”, chaired by Dr. Boris Liebrenz (Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig).

The presentations included:

• Dr. Daniel Kinitz & Martin Reckziegel – Building a Knowledge Graph on Arabic Manuscript Cultures: Challenges and Limits of Automated Optimisation (10:00)

• Dr. Boris Liebrenz – The Archive of Arabic Literature: Ottoman Constantinople and the Library of Abū Bakr al-Širwānī (d. 1135/1723) (11:00)

• Dr. Stefanie Brinkmann – Manuscripts Telling Stories: Commentaries on al-Baghawī’s Maṣābīḥ al-sunna in the Ilkhanid and Post-Ilkhanid Periods (11:30)

• Dr. des. Nadine Löhr – Astrological Manuscripts in the Age of Print: Ptolemy’s Tetrabiblos in the 19th and 20th Centuries (12:00)

• Fatme el Bazzal – Mobile scholars and their transregional entanglements: the endowed collection of Asad Allāh al-Khātūnī al-ʿĀmilī in Astan Quds Library in Mashhad, Iran (12:30)

• Prof. Dr. Verena Klemm – Regional and Transregional Ismaʿili Literary Tradition in Syria (13:00)

• Find the full programme here

Within the panel “Building and Preserving Libraries in Ottoman Lands and the Horn of Africa – An Interdisciplinary Approach”, Rawda El Hajji (Sächsische Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig) presented her paper “The Corpus of Süleyman Efendi and its Multilayered Manuscripts” (16:30).

The panel also included the following presentations:

• Joud Nassan Agha (Universität Hamburg, Germany) – A Court Session in Context: Understanding Judicial Proceedings and their Relation to Library Preservation in Ottoman Damascus (16:00)

• Nimet İpek (Sabancı University, Turkey) – Confiscating Books in the First Half of the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Empire under the Reign of Mahmud I (17:00)

• Michael Hensley (Universität Hamburg, Germany) – Owning and Preserving Libraries in Medieval Ethiopia and Eritrea (17:30)

  Find the full programme here

Within the panel “The Shii Deccan and Safavid Iran”, Fatme el Bazzal (Lebanese University of Beirut) presented her paper “An ʻĀmilī scholar at work: Muḥammad ibn ʻAlī ibn Khātūn in the Deccan India” (17:30).

The panel also included the following presentations:

• Dr. Alberto Tiburcio (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany) – A Safavid Legal Manual in Qutub-Shahi Hyderabad (16:00)

• Dr. Mahdieh Tavakol (Universität Hamburg, Germany) – The Transfer of Books from Shiʿi Deccan to Safavid Iran through Endowment (16:30)

• Prof. Dr. Sajjad Rizvi (University of Exeter, United Kingdom) – Naturalising the Shi'i Tradition in the City of Haydar (17:00)

  Find the full programme here

On July 10, 2025, doctoral fellow Rawda El Hajji presented her work "Reconstructing Buda Manuscripts: The Case of Süleyman Efendi's Multilayered Corpus“ at Once, We Were Here: Traces of Mobility across the Ottoman Empire, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität in Munich.

More info here

See program here 

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Full title: Data-driven intellectual history? The challenges of building a research platform for Arabic manuscript cultures

What do we know about the premodern intellectual history of the Arab-Islamic world, and where do gaps in our understanding persist? Which technologies can enhance accessibility and support research? What challenges arise in data-driven approaches to historical scholarship? The lecture explores these questions through the long-term research project 'Bibliotheca Arabica,' which offers fresh insights into Arab literary traditions by setting up an extensive database on Arabic manuscripts and manuscript studies.

Lecture at the Franco-German Summer School: "Open(ing) Science? Digital Humanities in Area Studies", Leipzig University, 8 July 2025
https://recentglobe.uni-leipzig.de/en/zentrum/details/event/opening-science-digital-humanities-in-area-studies

Paper presented at the conference "Le livre dans le monde musulman. Histoire et techniques / The book in the Islamicate world. History and techniques," organized by François Déroche, Collège de France, Paris.

Presenting Bibliotheca Arabica at the Workshop "Manuscript Culture from Nizwa to Gotha" (ثقافة المخطوطات من نزوى إلى غوتا), Nizwa (Oman), 27 April - 1 May 2025

ثقافة المخطوطات من نزوى إلى غوتا

Presentation on "Two IsmāʿīIī notebooks from Gujarat (17th and 19th century) – Literary networks between Cairo, Yemen and India"

International Workshop "Language Contact and Cultural Translation between the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean", University of Münster, Germany

Zum Flyer 

On January 17, 2025, doctoral fellow Rawda El Hajji presented her work "The Corpus of Süleyman Efendi and Its Multilayered Manuscripts“ at the Dreiländer-Kolloquium of the universities Halle, Jena, Leipzig and Erfurt at the Forschungsbibliothek Gotha. 

Find the full programm here

Talk given at the Khalili Research Center, Oxford.

Conference, Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute, Trinity College Dublin

In association with the Trinity Centre for the Book

Supported by Marc and Hala Cochrane, and the Trinity Research Incentive Scheme

6-8 November 2025

Convened by: Moya Carey (Chester Beatty, Dublin), Boris Liebrenz (Bibliotheca Arabica, Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Leipzig), Murat Şiviloğlu (Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, Trinity College Dublin)

Keynotes: Prof. Konrad Hirschler (Hamburg University), Prof. Tülay Artan (Sabancı University)

The Ottoman empire spanned three continents and a vast urban network, inhabited by a cosmopolitan civilian population as well as a political and military elite long steeped in book culture as part of practices of learning, entertainment, and status-making. Both cultural diversity and intellectual engagement are neatly evidenced by reading habits, as told in the material history of book collections across the Ottoman world. Whether private, imperial or institutional in nature, libraries existed in every city, each a potential nexus of academic enquiry and thought, sometimes with a distinct architectural identity of enclosed space for reading, debate, reflection, and competitive self-projection. Books were written in all the languages spoken across this multi-ethnic and multi-faith realm: Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Hebrew, Greek, Syriac, Armenian, Kurdish, Coptic, Latin, Hungarian, Serbian, and more. As Ottoman power and territory expanded (and later contracted), the political transition impacted libraries and intellectual culture all over the Arab world as well as the Ottoman heartland and Ottoman Europe.

The longer history of libraries is one of flux, with books forever moving in and out as new purchases, respectful gifts, personal loans, political confiscations and military loot. Whole collections can mobilise at critical transition-points such as the owner’s death or a significant handover of political power, potentially resulting in complete dispersal into the book market or wholesale absorption into another library, either circulating locally or exporting abroad. In more granular terms, the dynamic and mobile biography of individual books is also told through their evolving materiality, with successive owner interventions confirmed by replacement bindings, re-margined folios, new campaigns of illumination, and phases of inserted paratext. Today, the collective evidence of “past lives” remains documented in the notes added into books, by owners, borrowers, auditors, dealers and above all readers. The systematic cataloguing of this invaluable resource, central to new methodological approaches of book history, has also been taken up with increasing urgency. Data-driven projects such as Bibliotheca Arabica are currently facilitating access to a growing corpus of such material and thus allow for the connection of books with their past owners and readers across modern collections on a global scale.

With this in mind, we invite scholars to submit proposals that critically engage with the historical and intellectual significance of libraries in the Ottoman era. Papers might address, but are not limited to, the following topics:

• The organisation, growth, and transformation of libraries across the Ottoman empire
• Libraries as instruments of imperial, political, and cultural authority or identity
• Libraries as social environments: salon culture, intellectual activity, self-projection
• The impact of political transition on personal libraries and their owners
• The role of waqf (endowment) libraries in sustaining intellectual life
• Case studies of particular collections, their patrons, and their afterlives
• The material culture of the library: architectural spaces, book production, and urban context
• The materiality of the book over successive centuries of ownership and reader access: physical damage and loss, later repairs, re-binding, re-margining, and other interventions
• The book economy: the production, sale and re-circulation of books, the accumulation and dissolution of book collections within and beyond Ottoman borders
• The mobility of knowledge within and beyond Ottoman borders
• The shift from manuscript culture to print and its implications for the library as an institution

Submissions that incorporate fresh archival research, new theoretical approaches, or comparative perspectives are particularly encouraged.

Please submit an abstract of no more than 300 words, along with a brief biography, to Boris Liebrenz (liebrenz@saw-leipzig.de) by February 28, 2025.

Am Mittwoch, den 4. Dezember 2024, um 18:30 wird Dr. Kirill Dmitriev (St. Andrews, Schottland) in der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften einen Gastvortrag halten.

Dr. Kirill Dmitriev ist Senior Lecturer und Leiter des „Department for Arabic and Persian Studies“ an der Universität St. Andrews in Schottland. Er wurde 2020 mit einem Friedrich-Wilhelm-Bessel-Forschungspreis der Alexander von Humboldt-Stiftung ausgezeichnet und absolvierte in diesem Rahmen mehrere Gastaufenthalte beim Projekt „Bibliotheca Arabica“.

"Vom indischen Buddha zum europäischen Josaphat: Arabische Quellen des Romans Barlaam und Josaphat"

„Barlaam und Josaphat“ ist ein Meisterwerk der Weltliteratur. Der hagiographische Roman gehört zu den meistgelesenen Texten des europäischen Mittelalters. Seine Überlieferung in arabischen Quellen hatte eine Schlüsselbedeutung für seine Verbreitung sowohl im Nahen Osten als auch im christlichen Europa. Kirill Dmitriev stellt neue Funde und Erkenntnisse im Zusammenhang mit der Entstehung und Tradierung des Romans vor und geht dabei auch auf den Kontext der europäischen Traditionen des Romans ein.

On 8 November 2024, Prof. Dr. Verena Klemm will join the 7e journée d’études sur le chiisme contemporain in Paris and hold a presentation on "Efficient Networks. Reconstructing the provenance and transfer of Ismaili manuscripts from Gujarat to University Library Tübingen". 

Find the full programme here and here. 

The project “Paratexts Seeking Understanding” (PIs Garrick Allen, Christoph Scheper, Kelsie Rodenbiker) investigates from different angles what cognitive science and aesthetic cognitivism can add to our understanding of paratexts in manuscripts of different cultures. On the annual meeting, 23-25 October, Glasgow, Stefanie Brinkmann will discuss ideas for experiments with a manuscript with al-Baghawī’s hadith collection Maṣābīḥ al-sunna held at the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin (Ar. 4326, dated 642/1244-5). Stefanie Brinkmann is consultant in the sub-project “Words Upon Words. The paratext in the Islamic manuscript tradition: Forms, functions and cognitive values”, led by Asma Helali.

On the project:

https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/critical/research/researchclusters/biblicalinterpretation/researchprojects/paratextsseekingunderstanding/

Vortrag auf der Konferenz „KI-Methoden im Akademienprogramm“, Akademie der Wissenschaften in Hamburg, 23.-25.September 2024

Abstract: Die automatische Texterkennung arabischer Schrift liefert erst seit der freien Verfügbarkeit von Machine-Learning-basierten Anwendungen zufriedenstellende Ergebnisse. Dennoch gibt es eine Reihe von Herausforderungen, die im produktiven Einsatz zu bewältigen sind. Der Vortrag stellt Herausforderungen und Best Practices aus dem Projekt „Bibliotheca Arabica“ vor, in dem die Texterkennung von gedruckten Handschriftenkatalogen Teil des Workflows ist.

Slides

Lecture at the Summer School “Material Aspects of Manuscripts of the Islamicate World, with a Special Focus on Bookbinding”, Berlin, September 10, 2024.

On 7 September 2024, Stefanie Brinkmann presented the paper “The Circulation and Reception of al-Baghawī’s Maṣābīḥ al-sunna and its Commentary Tradition” on the German-Japanese bilateral conference “Textual Transmission in the Islamic Manuscript Age” (5-7 September 2024, University of Münster, organised by Philip Bockholt and Yui Kanda). The conference addressed various aspects of transmission and reception for literatures from c. 1300 to 1800 Middle East and the Indian Subcontinent, such as translations, adaptations, revisions, versions, the circulation of texts, and copying practices. Stefanie Brinkmann’s lecture presented key categories to trace the circulation and popularity of commentaries written on al-Baghawī’s hadith collection Maṣābīḥ al-sunna.

 Broschüre zur Tagung

Flyer zur Tagung

Dr. Boris Liebrenz participated in the conference "Central Asian Manuscripts in the Mongol and Timurid Empires" in Tashkent and Samarkand

Vortrag im Rahmen der Lehrveranstaltung "Politische und gesellschaftliche Prozesse vom 17. – 21. Jahrhundert in der arabischen Welt" (K. Stock) am Orientalischen Institut der Universität Leipzig.

Abstract: Was wissen wir über die arabisch-islamische Geistesgeschichte - und was nicht? Welche Technlogien lassen sich zur Erschließung und Erforschung einsetzen? Und vor welchen Herausforderungen steht datengebriebene Forschung? Der Vortrag erläutert dies am Beispiel des Langzeitforschungsprojekts "Bibliotheca Arabica", das neue Einblicke in die arabisch-islamische Geistesgeschichte bietet.

On March 16-17, 2023, Dr. Boris Liebrenz participated in the workshop of the "al-Jazzar Library Project" at Hamburg University (https://www.csmc.uni-hamburg.de/research/affiliated-projects/al-jazzar-library.html)

Lecture at the working meeting of the Fachinformationsdienst Nahost-, Nordafrika- und Islamstudien (Specialised Information Service for Middle Eastern, North African and Islamic Studies) in Halle (Saale)

Prof. Dr Verena Klemm hält am Dienstag, den 6. Februar 2024 in der Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen einen Vortrag mit dem Titel "Ismailitische Handschriften der UB Tübingen: Eine Provenienzrecherche".

Der Vortrag findet um 18.00 Uhr in der Universitätsbibliothek Tübingen, Bonatzbau, Schulungsraum B004 statt. 

Nähere Informationen finden Sie hier. 

Das Akademievorhaben Bibliotheca Arabica hat für den 22. Januar Frau Jun.-Prof. Dr. Katharina Meinecke zu einem Gastvortrag in die Akademie eingeladen. Interessierte Besucherinnen und Besucher sind herzlich willkommen.

Der Vortrag findet am 22. Januar 2024 von 18.15 Uhr bis 20.00 Uhr an der Sächsischen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Leipzig, Karl-Tauchnitz-Straße 1, 04107 Leipzig, statt.

Frau Katharina Meinecke ist Juniorprofessorin für Archäologie des Mittelmeerraums an der Universität Leipzig und im Wintersemester 2023/24 Fellow am Center for Advanced Study "RomanIslam – Center for Comparative Empire and Transcultural Studies" der Universität Hamburg. Als Klassische Archäologin liegen ihre Forschungsschwerpunkte im Bereich der hellenistischen Skulptur, der römischen Bestattungskultur, der digitalen Bildwissenschaften sowie der visuellen und materiellen Kulturen der „langen Spätantike“. Insbesondere beschäftigte sie sich mit der Bauornamentik des frühislamischen Wüstenschlosses Mschatta und der Herrscherrepräsentation der Umayyaden. Dabei untersucht sie die Potenziale von Globalisierungstheorie als Konzept für die Erforschung antiker visueller Kulturen. Bevor sie an die Universität Leipzig kam, war sie am Deutschen Archäologischen Institut in Rom, an der Technischen Universität Berlin, an der Universität Wien sowie als Gastprofessorin an der Masaryk-Universität in Brünn tätig.

Vorislamische Bildmotive in der visuellen Kultur der Umayyaden: Globale Perspektiven und Ebenen der Aneignung

Die visuelle und materielle Kultur der Umayyaden, der ersten Dynastie des Islamischen Reiches (661-750 n.Chr.), ist durch die Aneignung ikonographischer Motive und Formen aus unterschiedlichen Regionen des Kalifats gekennzeichnet, die vor allem griechisch-römisch-byzantinischen und sassanidisch-persischen Ursprungs sind. Insbesondere in ihrer Herrscherrepräsentation griffen die Umayyadenkalifen immer wieder auf Motive zurück, die in der spätantiken Welt eine geradezu globale Verbreitung genossen. In diesem Vortrag sollen anhand von Beispielen die unterschiedlichen Ebenen der Aneignung vorislamischer Bildmotive ebenso wie das Zusammenspiel globaler und lokaler Elemente in der Herrscherrepräsentation der Umayyaden nachvollzogen werden.