Gotha Manuscript Talks, Spring 2026

Wednesday, 4 March 2026, 6:15 CET

At the Crossroads of Empires: North African Libraries in the 19th Century

Prof. Augustin Jomier (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales & École Normale Supérieure)

While it is widely accepted that Maghrebi libraries were profoundly disrupted during the colonial period, we actually know very little about their earlier state. Drawing on archival materials gathered in Tunis and two libraries confiscated during colonial wars in Algeria and relocated to France, this presentation lays the groundwork for rediscovering book culture and library practices in the region during the 18th and early 19th centuries. It will highlight, in particular, the influence of empires—both Ottoman and colonial—on the culture and fate of these book collections from Tunisia and Algeria. 

Augustin Jomier is an Associate Professor in the Department of Arabic Studies at INaLCO (Paris) and also holds a joint appointment as an Associate Professor in the Department of History at ENS-PSL (École Normale Supérieure). His research focuses on the social and cultural history of the Maghreb. He is currently working on a social, cultural, and political history of libraries in the Maghreb (18th–20th centuries). He is the scientific director of the Maktabatân project, for the enriched digitization of manuscripts and archives of Emir Abdelkader and Sheikh al-Haddâd. He also serves as the scientific director of the René Basset Archives (EHESS).

Wednesday, 18 March 2026, 6:15 CET

Smuggling Papyri: Scholarship, Law, and the Case of Papyrus Hamburgensis bilinguis 1

Jakob Wigand (Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, University of Hamburg)

This talk examines the modern history of Papyrus Hamburgensis bilinguis 1, a fourth-century Christian papyrus codex acquired by the Hamburg State and University Library in 1927. While the manuscript soon attracted considerable scholarly attention, its acquisition and transfer from Egypt to Germany remained largely unaddressed in published research.

Drawing on scholarly correspondence, institutional records, and contemporary debates on antiquities legislation, the paper reconstructs the circumstances under which the papyrus was purchased on the Egyptian antiquities market and exported in violation of Egyptian law. Particular attention is paid to the role of the papyrologist Carl Schmidt, who emerges from the archival record as having been repeatedly involved in the illegal export of papyri from Egypt. 

By situating this case within the broader context of papyrus collecting in the early twentieth century, the talk highlights the close entanglement of papyrological scholarship, antiquities legislation, and collecting practices that frequently operated in tension with existing legal provisions. The case of Papyrus Hamburgensis bilinguis 1 thus contributes to a better understanding of European scholarly and institutional involvement in the Egyptian antiquities market and the formation of European manuscript collections.

Jakob Wigand is a historian and provenance researcher. From 2020 to 2024, he worked as a research associate in the DFG-funded project Colonized Manuscripts: The Provenance of Hamburg’s Papyrus Collection at the Cluster of Excellence Understanding Written Artefacts and at the Research Centre Hamburg’s (Post-)Colonial Heritage. Since 2025, he has been working as a provenance researcher at the Linden Museum Stuttgart, where his research focuses on collections from Cameroon held across multiple German ethnological museums.

Wednesday, 1 April 2026, 6:15 CET

Reflections on the Many Forms of Commentary in Astronomical and Astrological Manuscripts

Dr. Nadine Löhr (Goethe University Frankfurt)

This talk presents observations on commenting practises in Arabic astronomical and astrological manuscripts. Commentaries in a variety of formats (such as sharḥ, taḥrīr, and tafsīr) as well as marginal and interlinear glosses functioned as important vehicles for the study and transmission of knowledge. Practises of commentary writing range from individual scholars annotating specific paragraphs of a base text to more substantial interventions, including reorganizing its structure or summarizing entire works. Commentaries may be written in a scholastic milieu, at the request of a teacher, or under the patronage of local elites, but can equally reflect more informal and personal modes of engagement.

At times emerging in and returning to the margins, commentary literature frequently offers insight into patterns of reception. References embedded in these layers can indicate which texts continued to be read, taught, and regarded as authoritative, thereby situating a given manuscript within broader reading practices.

A focus on annotations and commentaries thus invites us to place readers more centrally in our analysis. Rather than viewing transmission as a largely passive process of copying, it can be understood as an ongoing practice of engagement in which commentaries played a significant role in sustaining and rearticulating astronomical and astrological literature.

Nadine Löhr is an editor and researcher at the Institute for the History of Arabic-Islamic Science (Frankfurt am Main). Her work focuses on the transmission of manuscripts on astral sciences and networks of scholars. At Goethe University she coordinates an initiative to record and study manuscripts sold through the contemporary antiquarian book trade.

Wednesday, 15 April 2026, 6:15 CET

Spoke not Hub: Regional Ottoman Manuscripts in the British Library

Dr. Michael Erdman (British Library)

Ottoman Turkish manuscripts have been a part of the British Library’s collection since its inception in 1753. The combined desire to represent Ottoman high culture, as well as the more mundane impact of Istanbul as a central hub in the manuscript trade, turned the erstwhile Imperial capital into one of the stars of the Library’s Ottoman Turkish collection. Familiarity bred comfort, ensuring a collection that was largely conceived, rightly or wrongly, as Istanbul-focused. Over the course of its history, however, the Library was enriched by examples of provincial Ottoman manuscript production. The cataloguing of the British Library’s complete Ottoman holdings, in the light of new research, has finally helped put these peripheral productions into relief. The nexus of Imperial, Imperial-adjacent, and elite manuscript production remains a core component of studies on the collection. But a new approach to extra-Istanbul creations is helping to underscore the diverse and divergent stories that emerge when the spotlight is shifted. In this talk, I will explore some British Library Ottoman manuscripts clearly identified as being from provincial workshops in Rumelia, the Aegean, southern or eastern Anatolia, and northern Mesopotamia. I will also tease out issues associated with contextualization of potentially provincial works, emphasizing gaps in our knowledge impeding identification. Together, I hope to inspire a view of our holdings as a holistic representation of Turkic production in the Ottoman Empire.

Dr. Michael Erdman (PhD SOAS 2018) is the Head of the Middle East and Central Asia Section at the British Library. His scholarship focuses on language change and management in Turkic- and Arabic-speaking communities in Anatolia and Central Asia.