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Medieval Damascus: Plurality and Diversity in an Arabic Library

The Ashrafiya Library Catalogue

Konrad Hirschler (Autor)

Buch | Hardcover

512 Seiten

2016
Edinburgh University Press (Verlag)
978-1-4744-0877-6 (ISBN)

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The written text was a pervasive feature of cultural practices in the medieval Middle East. At the heart of book circulation stood libraries that experienced a rapid expansion from the twelfth century onwards. While the existence of these libraries is well known our knowledge of their content and structure has been very limited as hardly any medieval Arabic catalogues have been preserved. This book discusses the largest and earliest medieval library of the Middle East for which we have documentation – the Ashrafiya library in the very centre of Damascus – and edits its catalogue. This catalogue shows that even book collections attached to Sunni religious institutions could hold rather unexpected titles, such as stories from the 1001 Nights, manuals for traders, medical handbooks, Shiite prayers, love poetry and texts extolling wine consumption. At the same time this library catalogue decisively expands our knowledge of how the books were spatially organised on the bookshelves of such a large medieval library. With over 2,000 entries this catalogue is essential reading for anybody interested in the cultural and intellectual history of Arabic societies. Setting the Ashrafiya catalogue into a comparative perspective with contemporaneous libraries on the British Isles this book opens new perspectives for the study of medieval libraries.

Konrad Hirschler is Professor of Middle Eastern History at Universität Hamburg (Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures) and previously held professorships of Middle Eastern History at SOAS (University of London) and Freie Universität Berlin. He is amongst others author of award-winning books such as A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture – The Library of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī (EUP, 2020), Medieval Damascus: Plurality and Diversity in an Arabic Library (EUP, 2016), The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands: A Social and Cultural History of Reading Practices (EUP, 2012) and Medieval Arabic Historiography: Authors as Actors (Routledge, 2006).

AcknowledgementsIntroduction1. The Making and Unmaking of a Medieval Library2. Organising the Library: The Books on the Shelves3. Plurality and Diversity: The Profile of a Medieval Library4. The Ashrafiya Catalogue: Translation and Title Identification5. The Ashrafiya Catalogue: EditionBibliographyIndexMaps, tables and figuresPlates

Reihe/Serie	Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture
Zusatzinfo	2 black and white illustrations, 54 colour illustrations, 8 black and white tables, 2 black and white line art
Verlagsort	Edinburgh
Sprache	englisch
Maße	156 x 234 mm
Gewicht	1062 g
Themenwelt	Geschichte ► Allgemeine Geschichte ► Mittelalter
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Geschichte ► Regional- / Ländergeschichte
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Philosophie ► Östliche Philosophie
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Religion / Theologie ► Islam
	Geisteswissenschaften ► Sprach- / Literaturwissenschaft ► Anglistik / Amerikanistik
	Sozialwissenschaften ► Kommunikation / Medien ► Buchhandel / Bibliothekswesen
ISBN-10	1-4744-0877-X / 147440877X
ISBN-13	978-1-4744-0877-6 / 9781474408776
Zustand	Neuware