From Constantinople into the World: The Mobility of Libraries and Their Owners Through the Example of Abū Bakr al-Širwānī (d. 1135/1723)

A lecture by Dr Boris Liebrenz (Bibliotheca Arabica, Leipzig) for the Centre for the Book Seminar Series.

Arabic literature of the Ottoman period (16th through 19th centuries) is often perceived through the lens of decline and stagnation, processes presumably brought about by extraneous forces like European Orientalist and Ottoman imperialist exploitations. This talk instead looks at Constantinople as an integral part of the history of Arabic literature. Nowhere can this transplanted tradition be found as abundantly as in modern Istanbul, the former capital of the Ottoman Empire. The libraries its elites established throughout the centuries of Ottoman rule provided the Arabic literary tradition with unmatched stability and longevity, often up to this day. Where did those books come from? How did they migrate to the Ottoman capital? And what did this mean for the intellectual development of the Arab world?
In the centre of this endeavour is a detailed analysis of the life, career, and collecting of Abū Bakr b. Rustam al-Širwānī (d. 1135/1723). As the sometime head of the empire’s administration, he was able to amass a book collection of unsurpassed textual breadth, historical depth, and rarity. As an immigrant to the city, he resembled many of the manuscript volumes he assembled there. Unlike many libraries of his peers, who locked them down in endowments, al-Širwānī’s books were dispersed after his death and are now found around the globe, allowing us to follow their paths further, also to Dublin. Al-Širwānī is a prime example for dedicated bibliophilia that, at the same time, stands for larger developments. Efforts like his safeguarded a tradition and shaped the way in which we encounter it today.

Boris Liebrenz studied history and Arabic philology at Leipzig University and is a research fellow at the Bibliotheca Arabica project. His publications explore documentary and manuscript sources from several eras, from early Arabic papyri to 18th-century merchant letters. In 2016, Liebrenz’s PhD thesis was published as Die Rifāʽīya aus Damaskus: Eine Privatbibliothek im osmanischen Syrien und ihr kulturelles Umfeld (Leiden: Brill) and was awarded the Annemarie Schimmel Research Prize in 2017. Recent projects include the edition and study of an Aleppine weaver’s notebook (The Journal of Kamāl al-Dīn the Weaver, with Kristina Richardson) and the study of Arab merchants networks and their letters in Arab Traders in their Own Words (Leiden: Brill, 2022). After postdoctoral positions in Bonn, Berlin, and New York City, Liebrenz returned to Leipzig and the Bibliotheca Arabica.

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