History

HISTORY OF THE BOOK AND BOOK PRINTING IN THE MIDDLE EAST

– The Research Library of Dr. Geoffrey Roper (Cambridge) –

Approx. 900 titles, some multi-volume, in various languages, principally English, Arabic, Turkish, Persian, French, German and other European languages. They are mainly on book history with a focus on printing and publishing history in the languages and countries of the Middle East and Islam. The collection also covers the history of book printing in Arabic in other parts of the world. Mostly publications of the last 50 years, but a few are older (19th century).
Pdf-Flyer and list of titles (in Excel) available for download. (See below!) ]

Geoffrey Roper, who compiled this collection over decades, was the driving force behind four symposia on the history of printing and publishing in the languages and countries of the Middle East, held in Leipzig, Mainz, Paris, and Alexandria between 2008 and 2011. These symposia aimed to build a body of knowledge and understanding of a hitherto neglected aspect of the intellectual and social history of the Middle East. The starting point of this research project was the thesis that only when a considerable amount of dat...
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Muqaddimah

Manuscript in Ottoman Turkish. Translation of Muqaddimah by Pirizade Mehmed Sahib, Sheikh al-Islam of Mahmud I.
Copied by Osman bin Osman bin Mustafa el Erzurumî in 1270 [1853]
650 pp., 18.5 x 32 cm.
Handwritten Ex Libris and seal of Ismail Hakki Bey, Member of the Courthouse under the reign of Abdülmecid I.
Ottoman style full leather bound with flip.

Ibn Khaldun Abū Zayd ‘Abd ar-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Khaldūn al-Ḥaḍramī 732 - 808 [1332 – 1406]

Ibn Khaldun's introduction - "Muqaddima" - to his universal history is one of the seminal works of historical scholarship. In it, the 14th century Arab scholar explores the reasons for the rise and fall of empires in an astonishingly modern way. Some modern thinkers view it as the first work dealing with the social sciences of sociology, demography and cultural history. Ibn Khaldun has been described as a precursor or an early representative of social Darwinism. Ibn Khaldūn as widely seen as a sociologist befo...
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