Bibliophilia Beyond Istanbul: The Eighteenth-Century Jazzar Library of Acre

Department of History cordially invites you to Yavuz Sezer Memorial Talks. This year’s talk titled "Bibliophilia Beyond Istanbul: The Eighteenth-Century Jazzar Library of Acre" will be delivered by Konrad Hirschler, on December 2, 2022, at 18:00. The event will take place at ANAMED Auditorium.

Moderator: Akif Ercihan Yerlioğlu

The al-Jazzar Library was founded by the Ottoman governor of the province of Sidon, Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar (d. 1804). While al-Jazzar is famous for his defeat of the Napoleonic troops and his massive building projects to change the urban topography of Acre, his library has so far remained on the margins of scholarly interest. Yet, this book collection was part of the most visible and enduring aspect of his long rule, a splendid mosque and madrasa complex in the economic and administrative center of his power. Even though this was a library on the cultural periphery of the Ottoman Empire, the holdings of this library included over 1,800 manuscripts, among them “ancient” masterpieces such as the most important copy of Ibn al-Nadim’s (d. 995) bibliographic work, The Catalogue (al-Fihrist).

Manuscripts bearing the stamp of al-Jazzār’s library have been known for a long time to sit in libraries around the world including Chester Beatty, Princeton and Berlin. Yet, the recent discovery of the 1801 library inventory in the Directorate General of Foundations in Ankara has finally provided the decisive clue to study one of the most important cultural projects of its period in the Ottoman provinces. Situated at critical junctures of the political and intellectual history of the region, the library represents continuities and changes in the wider world of books and knowledge economies during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.     

The event will take place at ANAMED Auditorium.

Free admission, drop in.
The talk will be in English and there will be simultaneous translation to Turkish.

About Konrad Hirschler

Konrad Hirschler is Professor of Middle Eastern History at Universität Hamburg (Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures) and was previously Professor of Middle Eastern History at SOAS (London) and Freie Universität Berlin. Over the last years he has primarily worked on the history of reading, the book and libraries with an emphasis on material culture. He is the author of award-winning books such as A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture,Medieval Damascus: Plurality and Diversity in an Arabic Library, The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands, and Medieval Arabic Historiography, co-author of Owning Books and Preserving Documents in Medieval Jerusalem and Muʾallafat Yūsuf b. Ḥasan Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī, as well as co-editor of The Damascus Fragments and Manuscript Notes as Documentary Sources.

Moderator

Akif Ercihan Yerlioğlu is an assistant professor at the department of History, Boğaziçi University. He completed his PhD at Harvard University’s joint program in Middle Eastern Studies and History. He also holds a BA in Psychology and an MA in Clinical Psychology both from Boğaziçi University. In his research, Yerlioğlu focuses on Ottoman medical discourses of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, especially the novel ideas and practices which were labeled as tıbb-ı cedid (new medicine). He follows a comprehensive approach analyzing the medical manuscripts of early modern Ottoman scholars and the interactions between the state and physicians in the medical marketplace. Yerlioğlu’s research has previously been supported by prestigious grants such as Mahindra Humanities Center, Gerda Henkel Stiftung, American Research Institute in Turkey (ARIT), and Koç University’s Research Center for Anatolian Civilizations.