Owning Books and Preserving Documents in Medieval Jerusalem The Library of Burhan al-Din
In the late medieval period manuscripts galore circulated in private collections and in educational libraries in the cities of the Middle East. Yet very few have left a documentary trail or have survived as an easily identifiable compact corpus. Writing their histories, understanding their social se...
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| Format: | Electronic Book Chapter |
| Language: | English |
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Edinburgh University Press
2023
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| Online Access: | DOAB: download the publication DOAB: description of the publication |
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| Summary: | In the late medieval period manuscripts galore circulated in private collections and in educational libraries in the cities of the Middle East. Yet very few have left a documentary trail or have survived as an easily identifiable compact corpus. Writing their histories, understanding their social settings and comprehending their intellectual profiles is therefore a challenge.This book discusses the only known private book collection from pre-Ottoman Jerusalem for which we have a trail of documents. It belonged to an otherwise unknown resident, Burhān al-Dīn; after his death, his books were sold in a public auction and the list of objects sold has survived.This list - edited and translated in this volume - shows that a humble part-time reciter of the late 14th century had almost 300 books in his house, evidence that book ownership extended beyond the elite. Based on a corpus of almost fifty documents from the Ḥaram al-sharīf collection in Jerusalem, it is also possible to get a rare insight into the social world of such an individual. Finally, the book gives a unique insight into book prices as it will make available the largest such set of data for the pre-Ottoman period. |
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| ISBN: | 9781474492065 9781474492096 |
| Access: | Open Access |