Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Mörike, Tobias
• Guidetti, Mattia
• Dolezalek, Isabelle

Titel

Beyond Manuscripts: Maronite Christians as Object Interpreters in Early Modern Europe

Ist Teil von

• Rediscovering Objects from Islamic Lands in Enlightenment Europe, 2022, Vol.1, p.101-121

Auflage

1

Ort / Verlag

Routledge

Erscheinungsjahr

2022

Link zum Volltext

Quelle

Alma/SFX Local Collection

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• This contribution looks at the role of knowledge brokers. Subscribing to the main hypothesis of the editors of this volume – that Islamicate objects were repositioned during the Enlightenment and became specimens of more specific other times and places – this paper claims that travellers and migrants from the Middle East in Europe played a crucial role in repositioning Islamicate objects. In the first place, it will be pointed out that Maronite Librarians engaged in the libraries of Rome, Paris, Cambridge and Madrid were also concerned with objects. The contributions of Miguel Casiri (1710–91), the Maronite Librarian of the Escorial, to the Antigüedas Árabes de España and of Simon Assemani (1752–1821), who was part of a dynasty of Maronite scholars in Italy, to Islamic coins will be emphasised. Secondly, a more obscure and less well known group than the “keepers of the archive of orientalism”1 will be studied. Maronite Christians from Lebanon travelling in the German principalities and the Swiss Confederation between 1720 and 1760 as Princes of Mount Lebanon2 were frequently invited to explain objects found in the curiosity cabinets of the courts they visited. It will be stressed that the Lebanese princes were crucial in inciting curiosity and explaining objects already present in Europe. The paper also suggests the inclusion of “captured Turks”, Beutetürken,3 who lived as unfree subjects in many German principalities, in this set of object brokers. 1 John-Paul Ghobrial, “The Archive of Orientalism and its Keepers: Re-Imagining the Histories of Arabic Manuscripts in Early Modern Europe,” Past & Present 230, no. 11 (2016): 90–111. 2 Claus Heinrich Bill, “Olivenprinzen im Deutschland der Frühen Neuzeit. Zwischen Morgenlandfaszination und religiöser Solidarität,” Nobilitas. Zeitschrift für deutsche Adelsforschung 24, no. 1 (2002): 1184–210. 3 Hartmut Heller, “Muslime in deutscher Erde. Frühe Grabstätten des 14. bis 18. Jahrhunderts,” in In fremder Erde: zur Geschichte und Gegenwart der islamischen Bestattung in Deutschland, ed. Gerhard Höpp and Gerdien Jonker (Berlin: Arbeitshefte / Zentrum Moderner Orient, Geisteswissenschaftliche Zentren Berlin e.V. / Zentrum Moderner Orient, 1996), 45–62; Stephan Theilig, Türken, Mohren und Tataren: muslimische (Lebens-)Welten in Brandenburg-Preussen im 18. Jahrhundert (Berlin: Frank & Timme, 2013).