April 1, 2024 Dataset Open Access

List of Identified al-Jazzar Manuscripts and Their Current Location

Aljoumani, Said; Burak, Guy; Hirschler, Konrad

Data collector(s)

This dataset contains information on the manuscripts that were once housed in the Jazzar Library in Acre (modern-day Israel) and that are today distributed across libraries worldwide. The dataset was first established in the framework of the al-Jazzar Library Project (ALP; 2022-2025) affiliated with the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) at Universität Hamburg.

ALP wrote the history of the library founded by the Ottoman governor of the province of Sidon, Ahmad Pasha al-Jazzar (d. 1804). This book collection was part of the most visible and enduring aspect of the governor’s long rule, a splendid mosque and madrasa complex at the economic and administrative center of his power in Acre. Even though this was a library on the cultural periphery of the Ottoman Empire, the holdings of this library included over 1,800 manuscripts, among them ‘ancient’ masterpieces such as the most important copy of Ibn al-Nadim’s (d. 995) bibliographic work, The Catalog (al-Fihrist). Situated at critical junctures of the political and intellectual history of the region, the library represents continuities and changes in the wider world of books and knowledge economies during the 18th and 19th centuries. ALP’s main output, the two-volume Al-Jazzar’s Library, is published with Brill (2025). In parallel, the CSMC carried out the project Rescuing the Books of al-Jazzar, funded by the Aliph Foundation, to create the conditions for the long-term preservation of the remaining collection in Akka.

The al-Jazzar Manuscripts 1 dataset covers seventy-five manuscripts identified until April 2024. The al-Jazzar Manuscripts 2 dataset contains the seventy-eight manuscripts that constitute the basis for the Al-Jazzar’s Library book. Additions to version 1 are: Jerusalem, NLI, Ms. Temp. Ar. 186.1; Beirut, Shawish Library; and Damascus, National al-Asad Library, MS. 16925. We expect future versions of this dataset to cover an increasing number of al-Jazzar manuscripts.