Material book culture in the Ottoman provinces. The case of al-Jazzar Library of Acre

The al-Jazzar Library was founded by the Ottoman governor Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar (d. 1804).

While al-Jazzar is famous for his defeat of the Napoleonic troops and his massive building projects to change the urban topography of Acre, his library has so far remained on the margins of scholarly interest. Yet, this book collection was part of the most visible and enduring aspect of his long rule, a splendid mosque and madrasa complex in the economic and administrative centre of his power.

Even though this was a library on the cultural periphery of the Ottoman Empire, the holdings of this library included over 1,800 manuscripts, among them ‘ancient’ masterpieces such as the most important copy of Ibn al-Nadim’s (d. 995) bibliographic work, The Catalogue (al-Fihrist).

Manuscripts bearing the stamp of al-Jazzār’s library have been known for a long time to sit in libraries around the world including the Chester Beatty, Princeton and Berlin. Yet, the recent discovery of the 1801 library inventory in the Ankara Endowment Ministry has finally provided the decisive clue to study one of the most important cultural projects of its period in the Ottoman provinces.

Situated at critical junctures of the political and intellectual history of the region, the library represents continuities and changes in the wider world of books and knowledge economies during the 18th and 19th centuries

About the speaker

Konrad Hirschler is Director of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures and Professor of Middle Eastern History at Universität Hamburg. He was previously Professor of Middle Eastern History at SOAS (London) and Freie Universität Berlin.

Over the last years he has primarily worked on the history of reading, the book and libraries with an emphasis on material culture. He is author of books such as Owning Books and Preserving Documents in Medieval Jerusalem, A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture, Plurality and Diversity in an Arabic Library, The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands, Medieval Arabic Historiography, Muʾallafat Yūsuf b. Ḥasan Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, as well as co-editor of volumes such as The Damascus Fragments and Manuscript Notes as Documentary Sources.

Contact

• Email: rw51@soas.ac.uk

Image: Al-Jazzār Mosque, Acre