Thread by @shahanSean

Seen this image before? If you’ve read abt Islamic history, I bet you have, but rarely is its significance ever discussed. It’s a library of sorts, but a very special sort. This image is one of the earliest depictions of a local *public* library in the Islamic world. A thread …

The image comes from a masterpiece of Arabic book art by a certain Yaḥyā al-Wāsiṭī, who copied and illustrated the Maqāmāt (“assemblies”) of al-Ḥarīrī (d. 1122) in 1237 CE. It is currently held @laBnF, and you can view the entire thing here:
gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv…

The scene that it illustrates is important: Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt is a picaresque narrated by a certain al-Ḥārith ibn Hammām who follows a roguish, itinerant con man named Abū Zayd al-Sarūjī across the Islamic world. (Each location/scenario is a maqāmah; Ḥarīrī has 50 in all.)

The library image comes from the second maqāmah and depicts a scene in Baṣrah where Abū Zayd hoodwinks library-goers into thinking that he’s a great poet. The narrator, Hishām, calls the library “its [i.e., Baṣrah’s] house of books (dār kutubihā),” which he describes as ...

“the assemblage of the learned and a meeting place for locals and strangers (muntadā l-mutaʾaddibīn wa-multqā minhā al-qāṭinīna wa-mutagharribīn).” The thing is that this scene from Ḥarīrī’s Maqāmāt was depicted more than once and by more than once artist.

Different depicts teach us that locally endowed libraries varied is size and scope: sometimes they took up entire walls and even required a ladder to reach the upper shelves of their stock of books; but they also could be small: all the books therein contained in a modest chest.

These *public* libraries, however, were quite different from the famous ones from the Islamic world that you've likely heard of, like the Abbasids' Dār al-Ḥikmah. Libraries as a public, endowed institution hardly existed before the 11th century. Rulers' libraries were private,

prestige book collections and were usually accessible merely on an ad hoc basis to scholars via patronage. An exception is the Fāṭimids’ Dār al-ʿIlm in Cairo, which flourished for 150 years (1005-1171 CE); in the quote below, al-Maqrīzī (d. 1455) describes it as open to all.

But this was *very* rare for rulers' libraries. Local, endowed libraries really began to proliferate once its companion institution, the endowed madrasah, itself began to spread across the Islamic world and the endowment of books became seen as legally permitted.

For more on the history of reading, libraries, and book collecting in the Islamic context, I strongly recommend Konrad Hirschler's *The Written Word in Medieval Arabic Lands*, which you read in its entirety #openaccess here:
academia.edu/1389695/The_Wr…

For a new, mind-boggling good translation of Ḥarīrī's Maqāmāt (including the library scene in Basrah from the 2nd maqāmah), I heartily recommend Michael Cooperson's *Impostures* published by @LibraryArabLit > preview it here: books.google.com/books?id=2gO5D…