Gotha Manuscript Talks 2022Manuscripts and Violence

14 February 2022

Photo: Universität Erfurt

Prophetic traditions, with notes on the siege and looting of the city of Buda.

The spring series of the Gotha Manuscript Talks 2022 explores the fate of manuscripts in historical episodes of violence and during disruptive events affecting whole societies. The lecture series is organised by the Gotha Research Library in cooperation with CSMC.

When we speak of the circulation of Arabic, Ottoman, and Persian manuscripts, we often think of activities like purchasing, gift-giving, collecting, inheriting, lending, endowing, and exchanging as important stimuli for the transfer of books from one place to another, from one person to another, or from one institution to another. However, books were sometimes brought into circulation because of historical episodes of violence and disruptive events affecting communities or even entire societies. They were stolen and carried away in times of unrest or became spoils of war. Violence and disruptive events could alternatively also result in the wholesale destruction of book collections and libraries and put an end to their preservation, use, and circulation. Especially since the end of the 20th century up until today, a number of collections and libraries have been looted, vandalised, and destroyed. Such events continue to put rare manuscript cultures at risk, as in the case of the historic manuscripts at the Timbuktu library which were burned in 2013, or in the case of the Zaidi manuscript heritage endangered during the Civil War in Yemen.

'Scattered, Looted, Vandalized, and Destroyed: Manuscripts and Violence', the spring series of the Gotha Manuscript Talks 2022, explores the fate of manuscripts during episodes of violence and destruction. Speakers discuss how such disruptions affected patterns of preservation, use, and circulation, and they inquire into the consequences of such violent displacements and transfers for the manuscript cultures of the Middle East and beyond. The series is organised by the Gotha Research Library in cooperation with Konrad Hirschler, speaker of 'Archiving Artefacts' (Research Field E) at the Cluster of Excellence.

Starting on 16 March, lectures will be held bi-weekly and start at 6.15 pm: