2025/09/01 by Vincent Engelhardt · 1 voice
Arts and Humanities · Social Sciences · #Islamic Studies and History #Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies #Library history #Medieval and Classical Philosophy #National library #Palestine #Vitality
paper · doi:10.1353/mns.2025.a974089
openalex publication_date 2025/09/01 · openalex created_date 2025/11/12 · openalex updated_date 2026/05/21
Abstract: This article traces the manuscripts of the Dajānī family in the "abandoned property" collection, currently housed in the National Library of Israel. During the Nakba in 1948, more than seven hundred manuscripts were appropriated from Palestinian homes in West Jerusalem. Since then, the manuscripts were hardly accessible and have only recently been digitised. Drawing on the paracontents of these manuscripts, this article demonstrates the vitality of Palestinian book culture in late Ottoman Palestine. In the two case studies presented in this article, libraries of Dajānī family members demonstrate different types of engagement with manuscripts in the same period. Ḥusayn Ṭaha al-Dajānī from Jerusalem represents a middle-class bibliophile, while ʿAbd al-Qādir al-Dajānī from Jaffa is portrayed as an active scholar. By identifying one hundred and three manuscripts from these two libraries and tracing their afterlives, this article reconstructs for the first time remnants of former private libraries within the understudied "abandoned property" manuscript collection.