Books Left Behind: The Library of a Cairene Scholar at the Turn of the Seventeenth Century (Gotha Manuscript Talks)

Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn ibn Muḥammad al-Bakrī, one of the leading religious scholars of his time in Egypt and the son of a very famous scholar and Sufi, died suddenly and mysteriously in 1604. His estate inventory, which is preserved in a sijill of Maḥkamat al-Qisma al-ʿAskarīya (Probate Court of the Askeri Class) in Cairo, lists a collection of books that were his private property and formed part of his estate. This list provides a window to the cultural horizons of an elite scholar of this period, especially when contextualized with the life of the owner and the history of the lineage to which he belonged.

Adam Sabra is Professor of History and King Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud Chair in Islamic Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research focuses on the social and cultural history of Egypt in the Mamluk and Ottoman periods.