Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture

Konrad Hirschler is Professor of Middle Eastern History at Universität Hamburg (Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures) and previously held professorships of Middle Eastern History at SOAS (University of London) and Freie Universität Berlin. He is amongst others author of award-winning books such as A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture – The Library of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī (EUP, 2020), Medieval Damascus: Plurality and Diversity in an Arabic Library (EUP, 2016), The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands: A Social and Cultural History of Reading Practices (EUP, 2012) and Medieval Arabic Historiography: Authors as Actors (Routledge, 2006).

Hirschler’s book is an excellent and extremely insightful reminder of how much these centuries-old monuments still influence our scholarly present.Two sets of plates (one documenting Ibn ‘Abd al-Hadi’s innovations and the second a facsimile of the original manuscript), a bibliography, a general index, and indices of titles and authors round out what can only be described as a book monument to a monument of books and will be of special interest to those interested in the history of books and libraries.

• List of IllustrationsAcknowledgements Introduction 1. Setting the Scene: The World of a Late Medieval Middling Scholar 2. Monumentalising the Past3. Binding Matters – From Stand-Alone Booklet to Monumental Composite Manuscript4. Conclusion: The After-Life of the Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī Collection5. The Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī fihrist: Title Identification6. The Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī fihrist: EditionBibliographyIndex of SubjectsIndex of TitlesIndex of AuthorsIndex of Thematic Categories