Oriental manuscripts from the Leipzig University Library
The Leipzig University Library owns around 3200 oriental manuscripts . 1690 of them come from the Islamic area (but not all of them are Islamic) and were written in Arabic , Persian and Ottoman-Turkish between the 10th and 18th centuries .
Duration
This collection includes around 100 Koran manuscripts , the oldest of which date from the 14th century. There is also a completely preserved family library from Damascus called “Refaiya” with 458 volumes, most of which were made in the 14th – 15th centuries . Century and are thematically diversified. The numerous owner and reader notes are of particular scientific interest. More valuable pieces in the Leipzig holdings include a collection of divans (collections of poems) of the poet Abu Ṭālib Abd Manaf, Abu al-Aswad al-Du'ali and Suhaim from the year 990, part of a superb Koran for Ilkhan Öljaitü , a fragment of the Kitab az-Zina ("Book of Jewelry") by the Ismaili Abū Ḥātim ar-Rāzī, which is probably one of the oldest surviving Ismaili manuscripts, as well as an inscribed talisman shirt from the Ottoman period. There are also workbooks and drafts by important orientalists from the 17th to 19th centuries such as Johann Jacob Reiske , Gustav Flügel , Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer and Josef von Hammer-Purgstall .
history
The first holdings came to Leipzig as booty from the Turks in the 17th century. In 1840 and 1857/58, respectively, manuscripts and excerpt collections were acquired from the holdings of the orientalists Ernst Friedrich Karl Rosenmüller and Josef von Hammer-Purgstall. At the instigation of the Prussian consul in Damascus, Johann Gottfried Wetzstein , and the Leipzig Arabist Heinrich Leberecht Fleischer, the library of the Ar-Rifāʿī family from Damascus was bought in 1853. All of these holdings were cataloged by Karl Vollers in 1906 . Around 150 Islamic manuscripts were added by the Second World War. In 1962 the takeover of the manuscripts from the Leipzig city library brought another 376 volumes, which, however, had already been cataloged by HL Fleischer in 1838. In 1995/96 almost 60 manuscripts were bought in Amman . The cataloging of this last group took place in 2006–2008 as part of the DFG- funded “pilot project for database-supported indexing and digital provision of the newly acquired Arabic, Persian and Turkish manuscripts from the Leipzig University Library”. A follow-up project from 2008–2012 is devoted to recording and researching the Refaiya collection.
The holdings in other Eastern languages currently comprise 1,560 East Asian volumes, mainly Indian, but also Tibetan and Batak manuscripts. There are also 60 Hebrew and 30 manuscripts in Syriac, Coptic, Ethiopian, Amharic and Georgian.
literature
- Aufrecht, Theodor: Catalog of the Sanskrit manuscripts of the Leipzig University Library . Leipzig 1901.
- Döring, Detlef: The acquisition of the Refaiya manuscripts by the Saxon government in 1853. In: Reuschel, Wolfgang (Hrsg.): Orientalistische Philologie und Arabische Linguistik. In: Asia-Africa-Latin America , special issue 2 (1990), pp. 19-23.
- Fleischer, HL: The Refaiya . In: ZDMG 8 1854, pp. 573-584.
- Fleischer, HL / Delitzsch, F .: Codices Orientalium Linguarum descripserunt HL Fleischer et F. Delitzsch . Grimma 1938 (Reprint Osnabrück 1985).
- Klemm, Verena (ed.): A garden up your sleeve. Islamic book culture. Catalog for the exhibition of the same name in the Bibliotheca Albertina. Leipzig 2008.
- Liebrenz, Boris: Arabic, Persian and Turkish manuscripts in Leipzig. History of their collection and indexing from the beginning to Karl Vollers. Leipzig 2008.
- Müller, Gisela: Oriental manuscripts. In: Debes, Dietmar (ed.): Zimelien. Book treasures from the Leipzig University Library . Leipzig 1988, pp. 139-176.
- Vollers, Karl: Catalog of the Islamic, Christian-Oriental, Jewish and Samaritan manuscripts in the Leipzig University Library . Leipzig 1906 (reprint Osnabrück 1975).