Organising the Library: The Books on the Shelves

The second chapter discusses the thematic profile of the books held in the Ashrafiya. The teaching in this institution was focused on Koran recitation and its patron al-Ashraf has been depicted in modern scholarship as a rather narrow-minded Sunni ruler. Consequently, one might expect a run-off-the-mill diet of books emanating from a small number of disciplines. The chapter challenges such assumptions and shows that books relating to disciplines such as Koran, ḥadīth and even law are small in number. Rather we find a broad range of topics covered, including the antique knowledge (e.g. Aristotle and Galen), medicine, pharmacology, pre-Islamic poetry, theology and mirror for princes. This is also reflected in the content of those works that were held in multiple copies: the library’s most popular book were the Maqāmāt by al-Ḥarīrī with 15 copies. The chapter is also challenge dominating assumptions about madrasa-libraries with regard to sectarian issues (the library had many Shiite works) and issues of high culture vs low culture (it contained many ‘low-culture’ works).

The Making and Unmaking of a Medieval Library

This chapter firstly traces the foundation of the Ashrafiya in late Ayyubid Damascus. It argues that the library was set up by two principal patrons one belonging to the political elite (the city’s ruler al-Ashraf) and one belonging to the civilian elite (the prominent secretary and son of al-Qadi al-Fadil). Consequently, it is possible to identify three main regional sources from which the books originated: Rather surprisingly, the plundered former Fatimid palace library in Cairo, Northern Mesopotamia where al-Ashraf had spent his early years and the local context of Damascus. The chapter traces in a second part the subsequent development of the library until its dispersal in the early Ottoman period. This chapter is completed by a brief outline of the subsequent fate of some manuscripts originally held in this library, many of which were taken to Istanbul. The two main arguments of this chapter are thus a) thematic, to see this ‘Islamic’ book collection in its specific regional context and b) methodological, to show in what ways the study of individual manuscript notes can give insights into book circulation.

The Ashrafīya Catalogue: Edition

The diplomatic edition of the catalogue’s unique manuscript aims at representing to some extent its organisation and the edition thus includes information such as line breaks and the various rubrics that the scribe used. For the sake of legibility, the orthography has been standardised to bring it into a form familiar to modern readers. The text is thus reproduced with full diacritical marks, although they are rather rarely used in the manuscript. The organisation of the catalogue according to alphabet, size and themes is indicated by the catalogue’s writer in display script and indicated in the edition by setting these structural terms in bold.

Plurality and Diversity: The Profile of a Medieval Library

The third chapter discusses one of the most intriguing aspects of this document, its system of ordering books. Our knowledge of medieval library systems has hitherto been confined to small collections and thus rudimentary systems or incomplete information in narrative sources. The chapter shows the highly-developed system for organising books according to three parameters, alphabetical order of titles, size of the books and their themes. In contrast to the highly philosophical schemes of how to organise and hierarchise the various learned branches of knowledge (such as those by al-Ghazali and al-Kindi) this library gives a very different insight into how knowledge was organised on a practitioner’s level. The organisation of the library, in addition to several other features of the catalogue, allows also an understanding of the spatial organisation of the library (the actual building was destroyed in the early 20th century). We do not have any study of the spatial aspects of a medieval Arabic library yet and the chapter offers the first exploration of this theme.

The Ashrafīya Catalogue: Translation and Title Identification

Chapter 4 provides an annotated translation of each entry in the Ashrafiya catalogue identifying the titles. Each translated entry provides brief information on the author (who is sometimes named in the catalogue), the modern edition (if existing), the book’s thematic field as well as further information that is occasionally provided (e.g. multiple copies, number of quires, illustrations, name of copyist).

Introduction

The introduction sets the scene by reviewing our knowledge of medieval Arabic libraries and the ways in which they have been studied. On the one hand it provides a historiographical discussion and on the other hand it places the Ashrafiya into the wider picture of Middle Eastern book collections.