November 7, 2025: Boris Liebrenz "Bibliophilia in 18th-century Damascus: The Book Collection of ʿAbdallāh b. Zayn al-Dīn al-Buṣrawī"

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.