Paul Babinski
@paulbabinski.bsky.social
Department of Religion, UGA
Recent publications
On the study of looted Qur'ans (with Jan Loop): https://brill.com/view/journals/erl/9/3/article-p239_001.xml
On manuscript catalogs: https://www.academia.edu/125336554/The_Manuscript_Catalog_proofs
Recent publications
On the study of looted Qur'ans (with Jan Loop): https://brill.com/view/journals/erl/9/3/article-p239_001.xml
On manuscript catalogs: https://www.academia.edu/125336554/The_Manuscript_Catalog_proofs
Fabrica linguae Arabicae, a 1639 Arabic-Italian-Latin dictionary by Dominicus Germanus de Silesia, notable for the woodcut calligraphy of its title page and its tree of Arabic verb forms. This copy was owned by the German orientalist Siegmund Fraenkel (1855-1909)
November 19, 2025 at 5:36 PM
Fabrica linguae Arabicae, a 1639 Arabic-Italian-Latin dictionary by Dominicus Germanus de Silesia, notable for the woodcut calligraphy of its title page and its tree of Arabic verb forms. This copy was owned by the German orientalist Siegmund Fraenkel (1855-1909)
Not exactly news (since the semester began in August), but I’m very happy to have started a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Georgia.
November 5, 2025 at 9:39 PM
Not exactly news (since the semester began in August), but I’m very happy to have started a position as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religion at the University of Georgia.
A pleasant surprise at the Hargrett Library at the University of Georgia: Mark Pattison’s copy of the 1629 edition of Scaliger’s De emendatione temporum, with a few annotations and a lovely nineteenth-century manicule
November 4, 2025 at 10:13 PM
A pleasant surprise at the Hargrett Library at the University of Georgia: Mark Pattison’s copy of the 1629 edition of Scaliger’s De emendatione temporum, with a few annotations and a lovely nineteenth-century manicule
1656 edition of Thomas Erpenius’s Grammatica Arabica, with the annotations of a seventeenth-century student of Arabic, recording what appears to be instruction from Erpenius’s student (and the editor of this edition), Jacob Golius (1596-1667).
November 4, 2025 at 10:10 PM
1656 edition of Thomas Erpenius’s Grammatica Arabica, with the annotations of a seventeenth-century student of Arabic, recording what appears to be instruction from Erpenius’s student (and the editor of this edition), Jacob Golius (1596-1667).
For instance, one our more exciting discoveries in Copenhagen: this 1633 printing in Arabic of the Poem on the Soul attributed to Ibn Sīnā, which was bound into the Dutch orientalist Jacob Golius’s interleaved & annotated copy of his Proverbia quaedam Alis. CKB, ms Or.Arch. 1-8
April 22, 2025 at 4:37 PM
For instance, one our more exciting discoveries in Copenhagen: this 1633 printing in Arabic of the Poem on the Soul attributed to Ibn Sīnā, which was bound into the Dutch orientalist Jacob Golius’s interleaved & annotated copy of his Proverbia quaedam Alis. CKB, ms Or.Arch. 1-8
This Friday I'll give a talk online (for UPenn's Schoenberg Institute) on the collection of Islamic manuscripts at the Royal Library in Copenhagen. Please come (link below)! I’ll be highlighting some of the new finds made by the Copenhagen team of the EuQu project.
April 22, 2025 at 4:37 PM
This Friday I'll give a talk online (for UPenn's Schoenberg Institute) on the collection of Islamic manuscripts at the Royal Library in Copenhagen. Please come (link below)! I’ll be highlighting some of the new finds made by the Copenhagen team of the EuQu project.
Early modern manicule left by an orientalist in a Bologna copy of Saʿdī’s Gulistān. It points to an Ottoman marginal note with the fifteenth-century Turkish translation (by Manyaslı Mahmud) of a passage in the Persian text. Bologna University Library, ms 3280.
March 14, 2025 at 8:15 AM
Early modern manicule left by an orientalist in a Bologna copy of Saʿdī’s Gulistān. It points to an Ottoman marginal note with the fifteenth-century Turkish translation (by Manyaslı Mahmud) of a passage in the Persian text. Bologna University Library, ms 3280.
I’m very excited to be speaking on March 11 at the University of Bologna on the history of collecting Islamic manuscripts in Europe, for the series “At the Intersection of Multiple Memories. Collecting Manuscripts in Early Modern Europe and the Ottoman Empire: The Marsili Case”
March 1, 2025 at 4:58 PM
I’m very excited to be speaking on March 11 at the University of Bologna on the history of collecting Islamic manuscripts in Europe, for the series “At the Intersection of Multiple Memories. Collecting Manuscripts in Early Modern Europe and the Ottoman Empire: The Marsili Case”
Olearius’s notebook is today (with a number of other Olearius manuscripts) in the Berlin State Library and was recently digitized: resolver.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/SBB0002F6C50...
January 9, 2025 at 8:12 PM
Olearius’s notebook is today (with a number of other Olearius manuscripts) in the Berlin State Library and was recently digitized: resolver.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/SBB0002F6C50...
“Come to our house without ceremony / For what ceremony is there between you and us” - Persian verse written by Muḥibb ʿAlī, the teacher of a seventeenth-century German traveler in Shamakhi, Adam Olearius (1599-1671), in the notebook Olearius used for studying Persian. SBB-PK, ms or. oct. 3
January 9, 2025 at 8:12 PM
“Come to our house without ceremony / For what ceremony is there between you and us” - Persian verse written by Muḥibb ʿAlī, the teacher of a seventeenth-century German traveler in Shamakhi, Adam Olearius (1599-1671), in the notebook Olearius used for studying Persian. SBB-PK, ms or. oct. 3
The three languages of Ottoman learning: notes on Turkish grammar (with the conjugation of "sevmek", to love) recorded by the English orientalist John Greaves (1602-1652) on the flyleaf of a Persian-language grammar of Arabic, also annotated by Greaves. Bodleian, ms Pococke 28.
January 8, 2025 at 2:01 AM
The three languages of Ottoman learning: notes on Turkish grammar (with the conjugation of "sevmek", to love) recorded by the English orientalist John Greaves (1602-1652) on the flyleaf of a Persian-language grammar of Arabic, also annotated by Greaves. Bodleian, ms Pococke 28.
A fascinating meeting of two manuscript cultures. The Newberry manuscript uses Ottoman silhouetted paper (with columns for the two hemistichs of Ottoman poetry), turned 90° to record Latin/French sayings. For reference: a collection of Turkish poetry (KB-Copenhagen, ms Cod. Turc. 21)
January 6, 2025 at 4:42 PM
A fascinating meeting of two manuscript cultures. The Newberry manuscript uses Ottoman silhouetted paper (with columns for the two hemistichs of Ottoman poetry), turned 90° to record Latin/French sayings. For reference: a collection of Turkish poetry (KB-Copenhagen, ms Cod. Turc. 21)
Finally, there's the Casaubon copy of Juan Gabriel of Teruel's 1518 translation (which I just tweeted about on the other site), Cambridge UL, ms Mm.5.26. I don't think it's been digitized yet, but see Katarzyna Starczewska's study.
December 17, 2024 at 6:04 PM
Finally, there's the Casaubon copy of Juan Gabriel of Teruel's 1518 translation (which I just tweeted about on the other site), Cambridge UL, ms Mm.5.26. I don't think it's been digitized yet, but see Katarzyna Starczewska's study.
Howells on his evenings reading Heine with a German bookbinder: “Sometimes, in the truce we made with the text, he told a little story of his life at home, or some anecdote relevant to our reading, or quoted a passage from some other author. It seemed to me the make of a high intellectual banquet”
December 16, 2024 at 8:09 PM
Howells on his evenings reading Heine with a German bookbinder: “Sometimes, in the truce we made with the text, he told a little story of his life at home, or some anecdote relevant to our reading, or quoted a passage from some other author. It seemed to me the make of a high intellectual banquet”
“To give an account of one’s reading is in some sort to give an account of one’s life”: A recent discovery for me, William Dean Howells’s 1895 My Literary Passions, a portrait of Howells as a young Ohio reader, told through the authors who were the stations of his literary education.
December 16, 2024 at 8:09 PM
“To give an account of one’s reading is in some sort to give an account of one’s life”: A recent discovery for me, William Dean Howells’s 1895 My Literary Passions, a portrait of Howells as a young Ohio reader, told through the authors who were the stations of his literary education.
I'm giving a talk tomorrow (10 EST/4 CET) on "The Orientalist Librarian in Early Modern Europe". Please join! I'll discuss the role of the librarian in scholarship, Islamic manuscripts, and the history of collections-focused research.
December 16, 2024 at 6:51 PM
I'm giving a talk tomorrow (10 EST/4 CET) on "The Orientalist Librarian in Early Modern Europe". Please join! I'll discuss the role of the librarian in scholarship, Islamic manuscripts, and the history of collections-focused research.
Joseph Hammer - Morgenländisches Kleeblatt (1819), digitized here www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb1...
December 3, 2024 at 6:53 PM
Joseph Hammer - Morgenländisches Kleeblatt (1819), digitized here www.digitale-sammlungen.de/de/view/bsb1...
“Do good and throw it in the sea. If the fish (balık) don’t notice, God (Ḫāliḳ) will”. Turkish proverb with an engraving of a view of the Bosphorus and Istanbul, from Joseph Hammer’s 1819 Morgenländisches Kleeblatt
December 3, 2024 at 6:53 PM
“Do good and throw it in the sea. If the fish (balık) don’t notice, God (Ḫāliḳ) will”. Turkish proverb with an engraving of a view of the Bosphorus and Istanbul, from Joseph Hammer’s 1819 Morgenländisches Kleeblatt
The Cambridge orientalist Abraham Wheelock, annotating a passage (in al-Makīn’s Arabic history) on monks in Egypt paying tribute to the Umayyad governor, cites Luke 20:25 (“Render unto Caesar…”) & remarks he willingly paid when Charles I taxed the clergy in 1635. CUL, Adv.a.48.2
December 1, 2024 at 10:27 PM
The Cambridge orientalist Abraham Wheelock, annotating a passage (in al-Makīn’s Arabic history) on monks in Egypt paying tribute to the Umayyad governor, cites Luke 20:25 (“Render unto Caesar…”) & remarks he willingly paid when Charles I taxed the clergy in 1635. CUL, Adv.a.48.2
Joachim Heinrich Campe’s Robinson der Jüngere, translated into Ottoman Turkish by a nineteenth-century student at Vienna’s Oriental Academy, with corrections. HHStA, ms Or HS 548
November 28, 2024 at 1:56 AM
Joachim Heinrich Campe’s Robinson der Jüngere, translated into Ottoman Turkish by a nineteenth-century student at Vienna’s Oriental Academy, with corrections. HHStA, ms Or HS 548
A fantastic line-up for Hülya Çelik's series on "Premodern 'Oriental Literature' & its European Readership". Upcoming: Claudia Römer, Munir Drkić, Gisela Procházka-Eisl, Julia Bray, Pier Mattia Tommasino. I'll speak Dec. 17 about new research on orientalist librarians. (Zoom)
November 26, 2024 at 8:40 PM
A fantastic line-up for Hülya Çelik's series on "Premodern 'Oriental Literature' & its European Readership". Upcoming: Claudia Römer, Munir Drkić, Gisela Procházka-Eisl, Julia Bray, Pier Mattia Tommasino. I'll speak Dec. 17 about new research on orientalist librarians. (Zoom)
Hunt’s source: an eighteenth-century edition of d’Herbelot’s 1697 orientalist encyclopedia, Bibliothèque orientale. D’Herbelot in turn took the anecdote from a sixteenth-century Ottoman abridgment of al-Zamakhsharī’s Rabīʿ al-abrār.
November 25, 2024 at 9:44 PM
Hunt’s source: an eighteenth-century edition of d’Herbelot’s 1697 orientalist encyclopedia, Bibliothèque orientale. D’Herbelot in turn took the anecdote from a sixteenth-century Ottoman abridgment of al-Zamakhsharī’s Rabīʿ al-abrār.
In a World War One-era Canadian scrapbook, among countless anti-German poems: Leigh Hunt’s 1834 “Abou Ben Adhem”.
November 25, 2024 at 9:44 PM
In a World War One-era Canadian scrapbook, among countless anti-German poems: Leigh Hunt’s 1834 “Abou Ben Adhem”.
My contribution to the catalog, on looted Qur’ans from the Ottoman Empire www.academia.edu/125336446/Th...
November 19, 2024 at 11:34 PM
My contribution to the catalog, on looted Qur’ans from the Ottoman Empire www.academia.edu/125336446/Th...
Very happy to see this new arrival: the catalog for the Vienna Weltmuseum’s exhibition “The European Qur’an”, edited by Jan Loop and Naima Afif, and with Goethe gracing the cover in a portrait by Marwan Shahin.
November 19, 2024 at 11:34 PM
Very happy to see this new arrival: the catalog for the Vienna Weltmuseum’s exhibition “The European Qur’an”, edited by Jan Loop and Naima Afif, and with Goethe gracing the cover in a portrait by Marwan Shahin.