Open Access Book: A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture The Library of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī

Author: Konrad Hirschler
Title: A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture The Library of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī
Published: Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture. November 2019
ISBN: 9781474451598 (PDF)

Reassembles the books of a medieval Arabic library that are today dispersed around the world Sets out a new approach to the study of Arabic book culture

Edits the most important Arabic medieval book list
Provides a new angle on the history of ḥadīth in the late-medieval period
Reconceptualises the mobility of endowed books
Reproduces the entire catalogue in colour

In the late medieval period, manuscripts galore circulated in Middle Eastern libraries. Yet very few book collections have come down to us as such or have left a documentary trail. This book discusses the largest private book collection of the pre-Ottoman Arabic Middle East for which we have both a paper trail and a surviving corpus of the manuscripts that once sat on its shelves: the Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī Library of Damascus. The book suggests that this library was part of the owner’s symbolic strategy to monumentalise a vanishing world of scholarship bound to his life, family, quarter and home city.

From Dust to Digital: Ten Years of the Endangered Archives Programme

"Much of world’s documentary heritage rests in vulnerable, little-known and often inaccessible archives. Many of these archives preserve information that may cast new light on historical phenomena and lead to their reinterpretation. But such rich collections are often at risk of being lost before the history they capture is recorded. This volume celebrates the tenth anniversary of the Endangered Archives Programme at the British Library, established to document and publish online formerly inaccessible and neglected archives from across the globe.

From Dust to Digital showcases the historical significance of the collections identified, catalogued and digitised through the Programme, bringing together articles on 19 of the 244 projects supported since its inception. These contributions demonstrate the range of materials documented — including rock inscriptions, manuscripts, archival records, newspapers, photographs and sound archives — and the wide geographical scope of the Programme. Many of the documents are published here for the first time, illustrating the potential these collections have to further our understanding of history.

The Endangered Archives Programme website features over four million images from more than 240 projects. You can follow the projects’ progress on the Endangered Archives blog."

Please note individual chapters are free to download.

 


From Dust to Digital: Ten Years of the Endangered Archives Programme