14266

SoSe 19: Books and their Jewish, Christian and Muslim Readers (S)

Dr. Ronny Vollandt

Comments

The course will combine two, already intrinsically connected, fields of research: intellectual history and the history of the book. Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities in the Near East from medieval to early-modern times were exceedingly bookish and much of what the intellectual historian of this region knows comes from the books and the documents that these communities left behind. Taking a comparative approach, the aim of this course is survey how particular bodies of knowledge turned into texts in books (often within an oral context), how these texts formed a hierarchy (seemingly the Hebrew/Christian Bible and Quran at the center), and how a set of textual practices (recitation, commentaries, translations) emerged. We will try to also understand how these books were produced in a very concrete material way (writing materials, different forms of books), how they were stored (libraries) and, eventually, how they were discarded (Genizahs) when not used any longer. close