Owning Books and Preserving Documents in Medieval Jerusalem : The Library of Burhan Al-Din / Said Aljoumani and Konrad Hirschler.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Jūmānī, Saʻīd Ḍāmin, author.

Hirschler, Konrad, author.

Series:

Edinburgh studies in classical Islamic history and culture.

Edinburgh Studies in Classical Islamic History and Culture Series

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Private libraries--History.

Private libraries.

Book collecting--Jerusalem--History.

Book collecting.

Manuscripts, Medieval.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (394 p.) : 49 colour illustrations 10 B/W tables

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Edinburgh : Edinburgh University Press, [2023]

Language Note:

In English.

Summary:

Explores the only known private book collection from medieval Jerusalem Translates, edits and discusses the most important Arabic medieval book list for Jerusalem – the largest known dataset on book pricesRethinks the notion of archival and documentary practices in the Mamluk period Provides a new angle on the economic history of the book in the late-medieval period Combines social history and material philology in the field of Middle Eastern historyIn the late medieval period manuscripts galore circulated in private collections and in educational libraries in the cities of the Middle East. Yet very few have left a documentary trail or have survived as an easily identifiable compact corpus. Writing their histories, understanding their social settings and comprehending their intellectual profiles is therefore a challenge.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.

Contents:

Frontmatter

Contents

Illustrations

Acknowledgements

Argument and Historiographical Setting: Books, Documents and Social Practice

Part I The Narrative

1 Making a Living in Endowments

2 Beyond Endowment

3 Archival Practices and Pragmatic Literacy

4 Lists and Inventories: The Sale Booklet’s Documentary Logic

5 The Making and Unmaking of a Prestige Library

6 Book Prices

Looking Beyond Jerusalem: The Dynamics of the Written Word and its Materiality

Part II The Documents

7 Analysis and Edition of the Sale Booklet

8 Analysis and Edition of the Documentary Network around the Sale Booklet

Appendix 1 Overview of Documents Linked to Burhān al-Dīn’s Life and Estate

Appendix 2 Edition of Sixteen Documents Linked to Burhān al-Dīn’s Life and Estate

Appendix 3 List of Edited Ḥaram al-sharīf Documents

Bibliography

General Index

Index of Authors in Burhān al-Dīn’s Library

Index of Book Titles in Burhān al-Dīn’s Library

Index of Buyers in the Auction of Burhān al-Dīn’s Estate

Index of Subjects in Burhān al-Dīn’s Library

Index of Objects Other than Books in Burhān al-Dīn’s Estate

Index of Ḥaram al-sharīf Documents

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

This eBook is made available Open Access under a CC BY-NC 4.0 license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0 https://www.degruyter.com/dg/page/open-access-policy

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 28. Mrz 2023)

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9781474492089

1474492088

OCLC:

1374540594