A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture: The Library of Ibn ?Abd al-Hadi

In the late medieval period, manuscripts galore circulated in Middle Eastern libraries. Yet very few book collections have come down to us as such or have left a documentary trail. This book discusses the largest private book collection of the pre—Ottoman Arabic Middle East for which we have both a paper trail and a surviving corpus of the manuscripts that once sat on its shelves: the Ibn ʿAbd al—Hādī Library of Damascus. The book suggests that this library was part of the owner’s symbolic ...