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Collaboration on book stamp / seal research

A few weeks ago, I asked on twitter if other people would be interested in pooling resources on book stamps / seals (both terms are viable from different perspectives, see below). There was some response, and considering how niche the topic has always been, that response seemed promising enough to me to spring into action. In this post, I will talk about how I envision a collaboration to move forward.

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Traces of a mosque library in Ottoman Greece

The manuscript collection in Dresden is among the oldest ones in Germany. It also stands out due to the provenance of many of its manuscripts being connected to the wars with the Ottomans, particularly during the 17th century. Several manuscripts came to the Royal Library in Dresden from participants in the siege of Vienna. In this post, however, I will focus on five manuscripts connected to a different military encounter which has not received as much attention in the historiography as the siege of Vienna. This is the 1685 siege and sack of the Ottoman-Greek town of Koroni and the looting of the library kept in its central mosque.

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Time to talk about book stamps

Instinctively, what comes to mind when you hear the word ‘book stamp’? Is it an Ex Libris with a careful inscription and perhaps an illustration as well? Or is it a functional tool that serves basically the same function as an ownership note? In contrast to those, there is little literature on book stamps, and maybe that is why this post deserves to be written—and published?

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Making books as an archival practice

Usually, posts are published on Sundays. This is an exception because today (when this is published) is my birthday. And I thought this enough to change the rule for once (and it’s more of a guideline anyway). In this post, we return to one person who has fascinated me for a while now and who has been featured here before: the Damascene book collector ʿAbd al-Salām al-Shaṭṭī. However, this time we are not just interested in his connections to Ibn Ṭūlūn manuscripts but rather in how he engaged with manuscripts for the sake of archival practices.

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