Browsing through the Sultan's Bookshelves

Towards a Reconstruction of the Library of the Mamluk Sultan Q?ni?awh al-Ghawr? (r. 906–922/1501–1516)

Kristof D'hulster

• Publisher: V&R Unipress
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9783847112921
• eBook ISBN: 9783847012924
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: African American History
• Index: History

Starting from 135 manuscripts that were once part of the library of the late Mamluk sultan Q?ni?awh al-Ghawr? (r. 1501–1516), this book challenges the dominant narrative of a "post-court era", in which courts were increasingly marginalized in the field of adab. Rather than being the literary barren field that much of the Arabic and Arabic-centred sources, produced extra muros, would have us believe, it re-cognizes Q?ni?awh's court as a rich and vibrant literary site and a cosmopolitan hub in a burgeoning Turkic literary ecumene. It also re-centres the ruler himself within this court. No longer the passive object of panegyric or the source of patronage alone, Q?ni?awh has an authorial voice in his own right, one that is idiosyncratic yet in conversation with other voices. As such, while this book is first and foremost a book about books, it is one that consciously aspires to be more than that: a book about a library, and, ultimately, a book about the man behind the library, Q?ni?awh al-Ghawr?.

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Table of Contents
• Body
• Picture Credits
• Acknowledgements
• 1. A Library Imagined. On Qāniṣawh’s Cairo and How to Return There
• 2. A Library Browsed. A First Instalment of One Hundred and Thirty-Five Items
• 3. A Library Profiled. Observations on What's In There, and What's Not
• 4. A Library Identified. From the Library of the Man to the Man Behind the Library
• 5. A Library Shattered. Tracing Manuscripts in Post-Mamluk Times
• Excursus. The Library of the Citadel of Aleppo, Anno 1518
• Bibliography
• Indices
• Addenda