Manuscripts, Politics and Oriental Studies

Boris Liebrenz is a researcher at the Saxon Academy of Science and member of the editorial board of the Journal of Islamic Manuscripts. His main interest is the history of manuscripts, libraries, and readers, also the topic of his Die Rifāʽiya aus Damaskus (Brill 2016; awarded the Annemarie-Schimmel- Forschungspreis 2017).Christoph Rauch is head of the Oriental Department at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin. He co-organized several conferences and exhibitions on manuscript collections and the history of Oriental studies. He is co-editor of The Yemeni Manuscript Tradition (Brill 2015) and The Diez Albums: Contexts and Contents (Brill 2016).

• AcknowledgementsList of FiguresNotes on ContributorsNote on Transliteration and Dates1 IntroductionBoris Liebrenz and Christoph RauchPart 1 Berlin2 Johann Gottfried Wetzstein als ForscherHolger Preißler †3 Semitic Studies at the University of Berlin during Wetzstein’s LifetimeLudmila Hanisch †4 Growing Collections and Rising ExpectationsThe Endeavour to Catalogue Manuscripts in Arabic Script at the Royal Library in BerlinChristoph RauchPart 2 The Wetzstein Collections5 The Wetzstein Collection at Tübingen University LibraryIts History, Content, and Reception in Oriental StudiesMichaela Hoffmann-Ruf6 The Quranic Collections Acquired by WetzsteinFrançois Déroche7 Johann Gottfried Wetzstein’s Manuscripts Containing Arabic Popular StoriesJan Just Witkam8 The Consul and the KingWetzstein and AlexanderFaustina Doufikar-Aerts9 Wetzstein in WonderlandArabian Epic Manuscripts in the Wetzstein CollectionsClaudia Ott10 Arabic Manuscripts and Books from the Bequest of WetzsteinBoris Liebrenz and Christoph RauchPart 3 Collecting Oriental Manuscripts11 Collecting Islamic Manuscripts at the Munich Court Library in the Nineteenth CenturyAn Acquisition HistoryHelga Rebhan12 Manuscript Acquisitions and their Later MovementsA Further Note about the Case of the Lewis Quranic ManuscriptAlba Fedeli13 Manuscript Ownership and Readership at the American University of Beirut at the Turn of the Twentieth CenturyKaoukab Chebaro and Samar El Mikati El KaissiPart 4 Damascus14 Looking at Man in the State of NatureJohann Gottfried Wetzstein on the Bedouin of the Syrian SteppeAstrid Meier15 From Leipzig to DamascusWetzstein as a Broker of Arabic Prints in SyriaBoris Liebrenz16 Ergänzungen zu den hinterlassenen Papieren Johann Gottfried WetzsteinsIngeborg Huhn17 Living in Mid-Nineteenth-Century DamascusInsights into the Urban Residences of Foreigners and LocalsAnke Scharrahs18 Arabist and Consul in DamascusSir Richard Burton and the Problematic Nature of His Translation of The Thousand and One NightsRobert IrwinIndex