A Network of Early Twentieth-Century Islamic Manuscript Dealers and the Collections They Shaped: From Istanbul and Cairo to Dublin, Princeton, and Los Angeles
Join UCLA Library for a presentation from 2026 Karmiole Fellow Garrett Davidson. Registration details forthcoming.
In 1965, Near Eastern Languages and Cultures (NELC) professor of Turkish language Andreas Tietze facilitated the UCLA Library's purchase of the Ulvi Tekeş Collection of Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Manuscripts(opens in a new tab). This collection had once belonged to Rashīd al-Ḥawāsilī (d. 1952), a Syrian manuscript dealer, publisher and seminary teacher based in Istanbul and Cairo. This was not, however, the first collection al-Ḥawāsilī had assembled and dispersed. In 1929, some three thousand manuscripts from his holdings passed into the hands of the London-based dealer Abraham Shalom Yahuda (d. 1951), in a sale brokered by the Cairo-based dealer Muḥammad Amīn al-Khānjī (d. 1939). Through Yahuda, these manuscripts eventually found homes at Princeton University, the Chester Beatty Library in Dublin and elsewhere.
This talk examines the networks al-Ḥawāsilī drew on in building his collections, reconstructs some of the sub-collections that were scattered globally through his sales and explores the commercial and personal relationships that connected some of the most significant Islamic manuscript dealers of the early twentieth century.
The lecture will be followed by a display in the Distinctive Collections Classroom featuring selections from Library Special Collections' Islamicate and Arabic-script manuscript collection—the second-largest in North America.
Learn more about UCLA Library’s Islamicate Manuscript Initiative(opens in a new tab) to increase discoverability and access to Islamicate and Arabic-script manuscripts and the recently-awarded CLIR grant(opens in a new tab) helping to fund digitization and curricular partnerships around these unique cultural heritage materials.
Dr. Garrett Davidson is the Director of the Asian Studies Program and associate professor of Arabic and Muslim World studies at the College of Charleston. He received his Ph.D. with honors from the University of Chicago’s Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. Davidson's research examines the Islamic scholarly tradition, Arabic manuscript culture and provenance history.
