Webinar series organized by the Gotha Research Library in cooperation with Prof. Dr. Konrad Hirschler (Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, Universität Hamburg)

When we speak of the circulation of Arabic, Ottoman, and Persian manuscripts, we often think of activities like purchasing, gift-giving, collecting, bequeathing/ inheriting, lending, endowing, and exchanging as important stimuli for the transfer of books from one place to another, from one person to another, or from one institution to another. However, books were sometimes brought into circulation because of historical episodes of violence and disruptive events affecting communities or even entire societies. They were stolen and carried away in times of unrest, as in the case of Muley Zidan, the Sultan of Morocco (1603–1627), whose Arabic manuscripts ended up being incorporated into the Library of the Escorial after falling into the hands of European pirates. Books could also become spoils of war, for example during the Ottoman Wars in Europe: According to a note in a seventeenth-century ḥadīth work, the manuscript, which is now preserved at the Gotha Research Library (Ms. orient. A 3), was found on the battlefield “under the body of a dead mufti”. Violence and disruptive events could alternatively also result in the wholesale destruction of book collections and libraries and put an end to their preservation, use, and circulation. Especially since the end of the 20th century up until today, a number of collections and libraries have been looted, vandalized, and destroyed. Such events continue to put rare manuscript cultures at risk, as in the case of the historic manuscripts at the Timbuktu library which were burned in 2013, or in the case of the Zaidi manuscript heritage endangered during the Civil War in Yemen.

The spring series of the Gotha Manuscript Talks 2022 explores the fate of manuscripts during episodes of violence and destruction. Speakers discuss how such disruptions affected patterns of preservation, use, and circulation, and they inquire into the consequences of such violent displacements and transfers for the manuscript cultures of the Middle East and beyond.