Libraries in the Ottoman World

A four day conference organised by the Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies in collaboration with the Trinity Centre for the Book, Chester Beatty Library and Bibliotheca Arabica.

Full programme here.

This conference brings together leading specialists in manuscript and library studies, provenance research, and collecting history to examine the Ottoman Empire’s multilingual, multi-confessional book world. Across private, imperial, and institutional settings, libraries were never static: books circulated through purchase and gift, loan and confiscation, inheritance and political upheaval, while their material biographies—rebinding and re-margining, new illumination, and accumulating paratext—record successive moments of use and meaning. Read alongside systematic cataloguing, these traces now allow us to reconnect volumes with makers, owners, and readers across continents and centuries. With this conference we seek to consolidate methods, share evidence, and map the networks that carried Ottoman books into modern collections.

We gratefully acknowledge the support of Marc and Hala Cochrane, the Trinity Research Incentive Scheme, Bibliotheca Arabica (Saxon Academy of the Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig), the Trinity Long Room Hub Arts & Humanities Research Institute, and the Chester Beatty’s Provenance Research Group.
Convenors:
Moya Carey (Chester Beatty, Dublin)
Boris Liebrenz (Bibliotheca Arabica, Saxon Academy of the Sciences and Humanities in Leipzig)
Murat Şiviloğlu (Department of Near and Middle Eastern Studies, Trinity College Dublin)
In association with the Trinity Centre for the Book

Image: Coffee house scene, folio from an Ottoman album (CBL T 439.9)

Please indicate if you have any access requirements, such as ISL/English interpreting, so that we can facilitate you in attending this event. Contact: SIVILOGM@tcd.ie