November 12, 2025: Boris Liebrenz "From Constantinople into the World: The Mobility of Libraries and Their Owners Through the Example of Abū Bakr al-Širwānī (d. 1135/1723)"

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.