Campus Gotha, Gotha Research Library

Gotha Manuscript Talks: Ibadi Muslim Manuscript Cultures in the 19th-20th Century Maghrib

Date
7. May 2025, 6.15 pm
Location
online
Series
Gotha Manuscript Talks
Organizer
Gotha Research Library in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at the University of Hamburg
Speaker(s)
Professor Paul Love (Al Akhawayn University, Ifrane)
Event type
Lecture
Event Language(s)
English
Audience
Public

Online event with Professor Paul Love (Al Akhawayn University, Ifrane) in English under the direction of Dr Feras Krimsti (Gotha Research Library) and Professor Konrad Hirschler (University of Hamburg)

bū Ḥafṣ b. Jamīʿ, Matn ʿaqīdat al-tawḥīd
bū Ḥafṣ b. Jamīʿ, Matn ʿaqīdat al-tawḥīd

Ibadi Muslim communities in the Maghrib have a rich and long-standing manuscript culture that reflects the itinerant lives of the community’s scholars over the past millennium. Whether to seek knowledge, to carry out pilgrimage, or to do business, Ibadi scholars have been constantly on the move across northern Africa, the Mediterranean, western Asia, and the East African Coast. The manuscript libraries they have left behind tell these stories of migration and return. In this presentation, I share some features of the manuscript traditions of Ibadi communities in the Maghrib in its latter stages during the 19th and 20th centuries, highlighting the stories of individual scholars whose manuscripts allow us a glimpse into their lives as migrant students and scholars. 

Paul Love is Associate Professor of History & Director of the Mohammed VI Library at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane (AUI), located in the Middle Atlas Mountains of Morocco. His research focuses on the history of the Maghrib, with a special love for manuscripts, documents, libraries, and archives. He has authored two books, both published by Cambridge University Press: Ibadi Muslims of North Africa: Manuscripts, Mobilization, and the Making of a Written Tradition (2018) and The Ottoman Ibadis of Cairo: A History (2024). He has also contributed to several international manuscript documentation and digitization initiatives in the Maghrib, partnering with colleagues and friends in Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, and France to document and to preserve written material heritage in the region.

About the series

Based on the library's oriental manuscript collection, the online series "Gotha Manuscript Talks" provides impulses for an increased exchange on manuscript cultures across disciplinary boundaries and brings researchers and interested parties into dialogue with each other.

online participation via Webex

All current dates

  • 5 March 2025 A Jewish Archive from Old Cairo as a Source for Arabic and Islamic Studies (Dr Nick Posegay, University of Cambridge)
  • 19 March 2025 Seemingly Identical and Seemingly Different: Archaeometry and Philology in the Exploration of the Gotha Collection of Early Qur'an Manuscripts (Dr Alba Fedeli, Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, University of Hamburg)
  • 2 April 2024 The Social Effects and Vanishing Traces of Pamphlets and Other Ephemeral Texts in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire (Professor Nir Shafir, University of California, San Diego)
  • 7 May 2025 Ibadi Muslim Manuscript Cultures in the 19th-20th Century Maghrib (Professor Paul Love, Al Akhawayn University, Ifrane)

Contact:

Curator of the Oriental Manuscript Collection
(Gotha Research Library)