Fall 2023Gotha Manuscript Talks

29 August 2023

Photo: SLUB Dresden,Digitale Sammlungen, Mscr.Dresd.Eb.391

Historical work attributed to Matrakçı

The Gotha Manuscript Talks are back with four lectures in October and November. The series of talks in Islamic Studies is a cooperation between CSMC and the Gotha Research Library and is taking place for the fifth time.

For the first time, the lectures in the series are not linked by an overarching theme, but each look at different issues. The series begins on 4 October with a talk by the Turkologist Kristof D’hulster, a Humbold Research Fellow at the University of Bonn. He provides a case study on manuscripts penned by the so-called kuttābīya – the sultans’ military slaves who were trained inside the barracks of Cairo – in the libraries of the late Mamluk sultans Qāytbāy and Qāniṣawh al-Ghawrī. Two weeks later the series continues with a talk by Zeynep Yürekli, who is Professor of Islamic Art and Architecture at Oxford. Presenting one aspect of an ongoing research project on a group of Ottoman manuscripts famously attributed to the historian and courtier Matrakçı Nasuh (d. ca 1564), her lecture focuses on a compilation of manuscript fragments and topographical views in the Sächsische Landesbibliothek/ Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek in Dresden.

On 1 November, Garrett Davidson, who is Associate Professor of Arabic and Islamic Studies at the College of Charleston, offers a preliminary view of the recently discovered collection of Maktabat al-Khānjī papers, which provide an unparalleled window onto the worlds of the Arabic and Islamic manuscript trade, as well as the networks and connections between Orientalists and Muslim scholars in the first half of the twentieth century. The series concludes with a lecture by Adeline Laclau, an Art Historian who specialises in Mamluk artistic productions, on 25 November. Her talk sheds light on the production processes, as well as the contexts of production and reception of illuminated manuscripts that were commissioned by Mamluk sultans and emirs, as well as the civilian elites, for private libraries or for religious and academic foundations.

The Gotha Manuscript Talks are organised by the Gotha Research Library in cooperation with Konrad Hirschler of CSMC. The series started in 2021. Previous editions included ‘Scattered, Looted, Vandalized, and Destroyed: Manuscripts and Violence’ (spring 2022), ‘Thinking Manuscript Provenance Beyond Europe’ (fall 2022), and ‘Local Manuscript Brokers: Between Preserving and Selling Literary Heritage’ (spring 2023).

• Download the Programme of the Gotha Manuscript Talks Fall 2023 Series

All lectures take place on Wednesday evenings and start at 6:15 pm.