Book Culture in Late Medieval Syria

Reassembles the books of a medieval Arabic library that are today dispersed around the world

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 ¿Abd al-Hadi 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.

Key Features
. 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 ¿adith in the late-medieval period
. Reconceptualises the mobility of endowed books
. Reproduces the entire catalogue in colour

Konrad Hirschler is Professor of Islamic Studies at Freie Universität Berlin. He is the author of Medieval Damascus: Plurality and Diversity in an Arabic Library; The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands: A Social and Cultural History of Reading Practices and Medieval Arabic Historiography: Authors as Actors.