Konrad Hirschler Knihy

Focusing on the Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī Library of Damascus, this book explores the significance of a major private collection from the pre-Ottoman Arabic Middle East. It examines how the library served as a means for its owner to preserve and celebrate a scholarly heritage tied to his personal and communal identity. The text introduces a fresh perspective on Arabic book culture, provides a critical edition of a key medieval book list, and offers insights into the mobility of endowed books, all while including a color reproduction of the complete catalogue.

This book discusses the only known private book collection from pre-Ottoman Jerusalem for which we have a trail of documents. It belonged to an otherwise unknown resident, Burhān al-Dīn; after his death, his books were sold in a public auction and the list of objects sold has survived.This list - edited and translated in this volume - shows that a humble part-time reciter of the late 14th century had almost 300 books in his house, evidence that book ownership extended beyond the elite. Based on a corpus of almost fifty documents from the Ḥaram al-sharīf collection in Jerusalem, it is also possible to get a rare insight into the social world of such an individual. Finally, the book gives a unique insight into book prices as it will make available the largest such set of data for the pre-Ottoman period.