The Arabic manuscripts in Trinity have found their champion! The Library has been fortunate to have Dr Torsten Wollina whose forensic study of the makings of the collection has opened it up to further research.
Marie Skłodowska-Curie COFUND Fellow for 2019-2020 Dr Torsten Wollina has spent the last year investigating the elements of the Arabic collection in the Library. Torsten holds a doctorate from Freie University Berlin. Since then, he has worked at the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, the Orient-Institut Beirut, and Hamburg University. He has published research on manuscript studies, the social history of the Medieval and Early Modern Middle East, and its contemporary literary representations. His book, based on the journal of Aḥmad Ibn Ṭawq, appeared in 2014.
Dr Wollina’s work in the Library examined issues of provenance and intellectual engagement and posed thought-provoking questions: how can we interpret the actions of the first curators of the Arabic collection in Trinity? Why was there an interest in collecting Arabic manuscripts in Dublin in the 17th century and who were the principal personalities involved? Where did the manuscripts come from?
In relation to the first question Dr Wollina’s research identified a point at which ‘we can glimpse the emergence of an “othering” of non-European languages towards what nowadays is called “Orientalism”‘. That this is the case is clear because the Arabic manuscripts began to shelved together in the Library, based on their linked provenance, rather than (as would have been more correct) being shelved among manuscripts from other cultures according to subject such as philosophy, medicine or poetry.
To bring all the strands of his research together, Dr Wollina has curated the Library’s most recent online exhibition, entitled ‘Why were Arabic manuscripts collected in 17th century Dublin?’. He makes clear that Irish scholars’ interest in these manuscripts did not reflect an interest in the culture from which they came but rather that they ‘had always viewed Arabic, Syriac, and the other oriental languages from the narrow perspective of their utility for Biblical and patristic studies’. Wollina also identifies James Ussher’s younger brother Ambrose (b. 1582) as possibly the first person connected to Trinity College Dublin who engaged deeply with the Arabic language: one of the earliest Arabic items in the Library is an item (MS 223) copied out by Ambrose Ussher; the evidence suggests that he may have had a publication planned before ill health overtook him.
As he comes to the end of his research in Dublin (although with further publications in the pipeline) Torsten will be taking part in one of the Trinity Long Room Hub’s outreach activities. On 24 June at 13:00, he will be the ‘Fellow in Focus’ in conversation with Professor Anna Chahoud (Department of Classics) to discuss his findings and answer any questions.
Here is a link to the registration page https://zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_gJIR-7FIQ-mKK17UQR5Cwg – everyone is welcome.
The Library has benefited enormously from the research attentions of a scholar of Torsten Wollina’s calibre; his being here is another example of the ongoing value and impact, for its stakeholders and the community at large, of the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Institute.
Dr Jane Maxwell
Wollina, Torsten, Zwanzig Jahre Alltag: Lebens-, Welt- und Selbstbild im Journal des Aḥmad Ibn Ṭawq [Twenty Years of Everyday life: images of life, world, and self in the journal of Aḥmad Ibn Ṭawq] (Göttingen 2014).