a- Ptracy) war) and the acquisition of Arabic manuscripts in RenaissanceEurope @ RobertJones- One of the ways in which Islamic Arabic manu- libraries and Orientalism.For example,the capture ol scripts, particularly Qurans and prayerbooks, came Seringapatamin 1799by British troops under Colonel into European hands during the sixteenthcentury was Wellesley,the future Duke of Wellington, yieldedspoil when they were taken as spoils of war and as pirates' that was fantastic even fictitious in the case of booty. It is usual for devotional works to be carried Wilkie Collins's moonstone. It also provided 2,000 into battle and on journeys by devout Muslims' So volumesin Arabic. Persian.Urdu and Hindi collected when European forces achievedsuccess against Otto- by Tipu Sultan.These manuscripts were then divided man troops in the MediterraneanSea or on the Hun- betweenBritish libraries at home and in India2. garian plain, or when piratesattacked shipping off the On the eve of the sixteenth century, however, the north African coast, they often found such books Catholic reconquest of Granada did not presage among the possessionsof prisonersand hostages,and a revival of Arabic studies in Spain. Reports that on the bodies of the dead. It was even possible to Cardinal Jiménez de Cisneros's policy of enforced stumbleupon whole collectionsof Arabic manuscripts conversionfor the people of Granada was accompa- in the madrasahsand mosquelibraries of any towns or nied by the burning of thousands of Arabic manu- citadels they captured. On one exceptionaloccasion, scripts in the Plaza de Bibarrambla contrast vividly Spanishpirates boarded a boat and found the library with the attitude towards Arabic learningfour hundred of a Moroccan Sultan. 1-earsearlier after the reconquestof Toledo. Unlike Violent eventscould of courselead to the destruc- Archbishop Raimundo of Toledo. the new Archbishop tion of books along with other propert-v.But some of Granada. Fernando de Talavera,did not preside Christian soidiers and sailors kept the Arabrc books over a group of translators recovering lost classical they found as trophies and as merchandise.As with texts in Arabic versions.Instead. he commissionedhis other plundered goods, a trade developed in these confessor,Pedro de Alcalá, to write a grammar and handwritten Qurans and manuscripts;and somefound lexicon of Arabic. These works, written in collabora- their way into the collections of a few European tion with a local faqíh, and published at Granada in scholarswho were eagerand able to read Arabic texts' 1505,predate any other European attempt to provide Others were presented to distinguished patrons of Arabic language textbooks on a wide scale3. But, Arabic studies. Today, a number of these Arabic becausethey were intended to educatepriests in the manuscripts of Ottoman and Maghribt provenances, languageof the Moriscos. they were written in Castil- saved four or five centuriesago from the ravagesof ian and transliterated Andalusian Arabic. So while war and piracy, are still preservedin major European they enablethe readerto preachin a dialectof Arabic, libraries. they offer very limited help to the student of Arabic Not that the sixteenth century was the Íirst time texts in Arabic script. Arabic books were acquired in this way by the west. Indeed,contrary to both contemporaryand popular Nor was it to be the last. The medievaltransmission of modern expectations,the very presenceof the Morisco knowledgefrom Arabic into Latin had followed close- community in Spain and the repressiveresponse of the ly in the wake of the Christian reconquestof Sicily Catholic authorities to that community meant that and Spain. In particular, the capture of the city of Spanish scholars and Spanish libraries did not play Toledo in 1085AD releasedan abundanceof Arabic a significant role in the sixteenth-centuryrevival of manuscripts and local Arabic-speakers for use by European Arabic studiesa. Christian scholars;and under the patronageof Arch- This astonishingrevival took placein other parts of bishop Raimundo in the early twelfth century, scholars Europe that had never known sustainedcontact with travelled there from all over Europe to collaborate Muslim culture. RenaissanceArabists - for so they with Arabic-speakerson the translation of texts that may be termed - regardedthemselves as continuing interested them 1. During the colonial period, the and refining the work of their predecessors;and in this appropriation of oriental manuscripts,including Ara- respect,their endeavourrepresents a final repriseofthe bic texts, also contributed to the growth of European medieval oeriod of translation. At the same time, Manuscriptsof the Middle East 2 (1987) q. Ter Lugt Press,Donkersteeg 19. 2312 HA Leiden, Netherlands.1987 ISSN 0920-0401 R, JONES:ARABIC MANUSCRIPTSIN RENAISSANCEEUROPE 97 however,they emulatedsome of the aims and methods Tottenham,William Bedwell (1563-1632);in Vienna of the scholarsand printers of Greek in the fifteenth the librarian of the Imperial library, SebastianTengna- century; and like Greek studies of the Renaissance, gel(1573-1636) with his Turkish scribes;andin Heidel- Arabic studiesand Arabic printing flourished first in berg,Jacob Christmann (1554-1613). In Leiden,Chris- Italy before crossingthe Alps to northern Europe. tophe Plantin's scholar-printerson-in-law, Franciscus By the early seventeenthcentury, centres of learning Raphelengius(1539-1597) was working on Arabic as as far flung and as different in culture, outlook, and was the influential JosephJustus Scaliger (1540-1609). circumstances as Rome, Vienna and London, or In Rome, Giovan Battista Raimondi (c. 1536-1614) Breslau,Heidelberg and Paris,could boast of scholars supervisedthe publication of Arabic books for the with a knowledgeof Arabic and collectionsof Arabic Medici Oriental Press,which was founded in Erpe- manuscriptsthat were wholly unprecedentedin those nius's birthyear by a future Grand Duke of Tuscany, parts. Not that thesescholars made anything like the Ferdinando de' Medici: and in Breslau there was the contribution to the mainstreamof European learning AvicennistPeter Kirsten (l 575-1640)7. that can be claimed for the medieval translators of Both thesegenerations of scholarswere the pioneers Arabic texts into Latin. But by making it possiblefor who created the necessaryconditions in which the Europeans at home to tackle Arabic texts directly. greatseventeenth-century collectors and bibliographers RenaissanceArabists created a new discipline which of Arabic manuscripts- Golius, Pococke, Warner, totally changedthe nature of European knowledgeof Hottinger.d'Herbelot and so could pursuetheir Islam, the Arabs. their language.and their learning: work. and for many this change implies something much Prior to the sixteenth century. European scholars more immediateand important than the transmission and librariesmade a feu isoiatedacquisitions of Ara- of scientificor philosophicalideas in the Middle Ages. bic manuscripts.We hear of Arabic manuscripts It heraldsthe birth of Orientalisms. housed at Ciuny and in the episcopallibrary at York The European discovery of Arabic learning during during the Middle Ages8 ; and in the secondhalf of the the Renaissanceprogressed in a competitive atmos- fifteenth century two humanists owned a few Arabic phere through the sustainedeffort of a few isolated manuscripts: Giorgio Valla had five; and Giovanni scholars,sometimes supported by influential patrons, Pico della Mirandola had sevene. Some fifty-seven and using, and occasionally pooling, minimal Arabic manuscriptsentered the Vatican library, proba- resources.These included. to some extent as we shall bly from its inception in 1450and perhapsbrought to see,manuscripts acquired as booty. The famousmedie- Italy as a gift by the legation of the Coptic Patriarch val translators had not left their successorsanv sub- John Xl to the Councilof Florencein 144110. stantialcollections of Arabic manuscriptsnor an1 of In the formatire penod that concernsus in this the meansfor learningArabic: and as Thomas Erpe- article.during the sixteenthcentur,v and the lifetimeof nius. professorof Arabic at LeidenUniversity. told a Thomas Erpenrus.the rnflur o1'Arabic manuscripts new generationof studentsin 1620,access to Arabic into Europe increasedhtfully due to a variety of books, teachers,and languageprimers was a privilege circumstances.There were those among the Arabists that had only just beenwon6. who combined physicalcourage rvith their intellectual In the early sixteenthcentury, a first generationof curiosity and undertook dangerousjourneys to North Orientalistswith a specialinterest in Arabic - Agos- Africa, the Ottoman World, Persia,and India with the tino Giustiniani (1470-1536),Johann Albrecht von expresspurpose of learning Arabic and other eastern Widmanstetter (1506-1557), Cardinal Egidio of languagesand of recoveringArabic manuscripts. Viterbo and his Arabic-speakingassistant Leo Africa- Andrea Alpago (d. 1520) was exceptional among nus (born c. 1490), Teseo Ambrogio (1469-1540), RenaissanceArabists in that he spent most of his life NicolasClenardus (c. 1493-1542).and especiallyGuil- in Damascus.attached to the Venetian legation. He laume Postel (1510-1581)- developedareas of in- travelledwidely in searchof manuscriptsin other parts terestthat were to dominate the attention of a second of the Arab world but we do not know what becameof generatron. his collectionI 1. Guillaume Postel.on the other hand. These later Arabists straddled the turn of the cen- brought home