School of Advanced Study & The Warburg Institute

Looting, stealing and purchasing: the Western acquisition of Arabic manuscripts in the early modern period

Professor Alastair Hamilton, Arcadian Visiting Research Professor, The Warburg Institute

Chair: Professor Peter Mack, Director, The Warburg Institute

The lecture surveys the various means by which European collectors acquired Arabic manuscripts in the early modern period and how they established which manuscripts they wanted to acquire. The emphasis will be on the looting carried out during the wars against the Ottomans and the early colonial wars, on the subterfuges necessary for a western collector to buy Islamic manuscripts in the Arab world and to persuade the monastic librarians to part with Christian Arabic manuscripts, and on western efforts to establish a cultural canon in order to identify works of historical and literary importance.