A Travelling Folio from Tripoli’s Lost Library

Konrad Hirschler

What happened to the famous library of Tripoli after the Crusader conquest of the city in 1109 is far from straightforward; the Latin sources are silent, and the Arabic sources mention the library’s fate only in passing. Yet, popular history writing developed the notion that the conquerors burned all the library’s books. A single newly discovered folio now changes the situation.

When the Crusades arrived in Western Asia in 1098, the Levant was fractured into numerous semi-autonomous lordships. One of these was Tripoli on the coast of present-day Lebanon. The Tripoli lordship was ruled by the Banū ʿAmmār family, who asserted their legitimacy not only through military power but also through scholarly patronage. Their most enduring cultural achievement was the foundation of the Dār al-ʿIlm, or House of Wisdom, a major centre of learning with a large library renowned and celebrated across Greater Syria and beyond. Some medieval writers dramatically inflated the library’s size, claiming it held millions of volumes. While such figures are fantastical, the library was without doubt one of the region’s most impressive book collections.

The idea that Crusaders burned Tripoli’s library originates not from contemporary sources, but from a much later chronicle written nearly 300 years after the event. Why, then, did the burning story become so dominant? Partly because library destruction is a powerful cultural image. The burning of the Library of Alexandria, the Mongol sack of Baghdad, and other dramatic narratives have shaped imaginations. They offer a simple, symbolic explanation for the disappearance of knowledge. The narrative of the burning of the Tripoli library was further corroborated by the fact that no book from that library has come down to us.

A fragile leaf with the shelfmark Şam evrakları 13005, recently discovered in the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum in Istanbul, is the first and only known surviving fragment from the Tripoli library. It is a single parchment folio – damaged, stitched, blank on one side and barely legible on the other (see Fig. 1). At first glance, it seems inconspicuous. Yet, it carries an endowment note written in the name of Tripoli’s last pre-Crusader ruler, Fakhr al-Mulk Ibn ʿAmmār, in 1101. This note explicitly dedicates the book, of which the folio was still part at this point, to the House of Wisdom, thereby transforming the otherwise modest object into a unique historical witness: ‘Endowment by … Fakhr al-Mulk … for the benefit of the House of Wisdom … from among what was retrieved from the hands of the unbelievers.’

The folio survives today because it was once stored in the Qubbat al-Khazna in Damascus. Damascene communities deposited worn or damaged leaves, quires and books in this Geniza-style storeroom over the centuries. When the Ottoman state transferred the contents of the Qubba to Istanbul during World War I, the folio travelled with them. It now resides in a thick folder with hundreds of fragments, mostly individual leaves with unrelated texts, assembled only because of their shared Damascene provenance. While this small fragment may appear inconspicuous, it is of considerable historical relevance. The survival rate of medieval Arabic manuscripts is extremely low: of the great Umayyad library of Cordoba, founded in the 10th century, for instance, only a single manuscript is known today. These low survival rates were not necessarily the result of intentional destruction, but instead of the fact that Arabic manuscript cultures, unlike those in Europe, persisted into the nineteenth century, hardly rivalled by printing techniques. As a result, medieval manuscripts continued to be used as everyday objects, subject to wear and tear.

The discovery of the folio in Istanbul not only challenges the narrative of the complete destruction of the Tripoli library but also reveals a much larger story of how books moved, survived, and were repeatedly reclaimed in times of war. Fakhr al-Mulk had retrieved the book ‘from the hands of the unbelievers’, that is, the Crusaders. This means that before reaching Tripoli, the book had already been seized by Crusader forces, likely during the 1099 conquest of Jerusalem. It is well known that West Asian and North African Jewish communities paid ‘ransoms’ to Crusaders to retrieve books, especially Torah scrolls, plundered after the Crusaders had conquered Jerusalem. The Tripoli folio indicates that Muslim communities did the same, making ransoming an essential mechanism for the circulation of books during the early Crusading period. In this sense, the House of Wisdom also became a sanctuary for books reclaimed from Crusader plunder.

However, in 1109, the book was once again looted when the Crusaders took Tripoli. Given its presence in the Qubba collection, it was most likely a Damascene book collector who ransomed it. This user subsequently deposited it in the Qubba when it became too damaged for further use. Why Damascene usage communities deposited some worn-out leaves and books in the Qubba, and not others, is far from clear. We know, however, that the most intensive period of doing so was between the twelfth and fourteenth centuries. They particularly deposited parchments in the Qubba, a writing support that was at this point considered ‘archaic’ as Arabic manuscript cultures had already transitioned to paper as the primary writing material. It is thus not too surprising that the Tripoli parchment folio was deemed to be one of those objects to go into this depository.

Just as important as the writing on the folio for understanding its trajectory is the material evidence. The folio’s upper-right corner was ripped away and then reattached using crude stitching. The endowment note extends over the sewing thread, proving the damage happened after the book entered the House of Wisdom, possibly during the 1109 Crusader plunder of the library. The stitching not only reattached the torn corner, but it also continued along the folio’s edge. This practice hints at an overcasting sewing method typically used for re-attaching loose sheets after the spine-fold of a bifolium was damaged entirely and/or to connect loose sheets to a larger text block. The crudeness of the stitching suggests the repair was undertaken not by a trained bookbinder but by someone more accustomed to mending cloth (see Fig. 2). The repair probably occurred after the folio had been plundered from Tripoli and ransomed by its new Damascene owner. This hypothesis aligns with twelfth-century book cultures in the eastern Mediterranean, where parchment knowledge was declining and paper books predominated.

What emerges through textual clues, material evidence, and broader historical context is a remarkable trajectory of a written artefact that went through at least eleven distinct phases:

1. Produced somewhere in the Islamic world.
2. Owned in Jerusalem prior to 1099.
3. Plundered by Crusaders during Jerusalem’s fall.
4. Ransomed by Fakhr al-Mulk before 1101/2.
5. Endowed to Tripoli’s House of Wisdom.
6. Plundered again by Crusaders in 1109.
7. Acquired by a Damascene owner, likely through ransom.
8. Repaired with improvised stitching.
9. Deposited in the Qubbat al-Khazna.
10. Transferred during World War I to Istanbul in 1917.
11. Museum-preserved in the Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum.

Instead of being destroyed, the book (and this remaining fragment) lived a long and mobile life, crossing political, religious, and geographic boundaries. Its journey reflects the broader reality that books – especially during periods of conflict – were often valued as portable assets, plundered, traded, ransomed and relocated across cultures (in this case from Jerusalem to Tripoli, Damascus and, finally, Istanbul). Violent conflicts generated unexpected pathways for books that circulated via ransom markets, plunder and re-endowment. While libraries disappear, single books often don’t – they just disperse into new contexts. In a 2025 special issue of Archival Science, CSMC researchers have already highlighted the value of examining such ‘unconventional’ modes of transmission for written artefacts from archives. The present case shows that following up on the unexpected trajectory of a single written artefact can also help to reassess established narratives about its previous context – for example, a library that no longer exists.

The whole story of the Tripoli folio can be read in the article ‘Destroyed Books, Ransomed Books, Mobile Books: The Early Crusades and the Fate of Tripoli’s Library’, Al-Masaq. Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean, 38/1 (2026): 132–150.

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Description

Location: Turkish and Islamic Arts Museum

Shelfmark: Şam evrakları 13005

Date: 1101 (endowment note); production date of origin codex unclear

Material: parchment

Size: 11 cm × 15 cm

Origin: unclear

Copyright Notice

Copyright for all images: Türk ve İslam Eserleri Müzesi Müdürlüğü/Ministry of Culture and Tourism.

Reference Note

Konrad Hirschler (2026), A Travelling Folio from Tripoli’s Lost Library. In Marina Sartori, Thies Staack (eds): Artefact of the Month No. 36, CSMC, Hamburg.