Orientalische Handschriften
Item
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Country
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DE
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Name of institution (English)
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Saxon State and University Library
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Language of name of institution
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deu
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Contact information: postal address
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Zellescher Weg 18, 01069 Dresden
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Contact information: phone number
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0049 351 4677390
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Contact information: email
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information@slub-dresden.de
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Reference number
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Mscr.Dresd.
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Type of reference number
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Archival reference number
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Title (English)
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Oriental manuscripts
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Title (official language of the state)
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Orientalische Handschriften
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Language of title
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deu
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Creator / accumulator
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Dresden University Library
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Date note
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12th century/19th century
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Language(s)
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heb
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Extent
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989 manuscripts
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Type of material
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Textual Material
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Scope and content
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This Orientalische Handschriften collection contains 998 Oriental manuscripts, namely 448 Islamic (196 Ottoman, 184 Arabic, 68 Persian), 438 Tibetan, 58 Mongolian, 18 Chinese, 10 Hebrew, 9 Indonesian, 4 Ethiopian, 3 Japanese and 1 Sanskrit.
Among the Hebrew manuscripts contained in this collection, there is a copy of the Ninth Book of the Al' Mansuri by Rhazes, expounded and commented upon by Gerard de Solo and translated from Latin into Hebrew by Tobiel ben Samuel de Leiria, a Jewish physician (Mscr.Dresd.Ea.140). Tobiel translated this work in Coimbra, in 1388, under the sponsorship of Moisés de Leiria, "rabi-mor" and physician of King João I.
The collection also includes the manuscript "Iudaei Lusitani anonymi Liber blasphemus", a Latin translation made by Johann Christoph Wolf (1683-1739) of an anti-Christian text by Moses Raphael d’Aguilar’ (d. 1679), originally written in Portuguese and well known in a number of Protestant anti-Trinitarian and atheistic circles during the eighteenth century. See Toribio Pérez (2013).
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See here a digital copy of the Ninth Book of the Al' Mansuri Mscr.Dresd.Ea.140
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Archival history
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The Islamic manuscripts contained in the Oriental manuscripts collection of the SLUB were acquired in the 18th and 19th centuries from collections of nobility and scholarly estates, following clashes with the Ottomans in the Balkan region. In the 19th century, a large number of Tibetan and Mongolian manuscripts were purchased. Other Oriental manuscripts, including the Hebrew manuscripts, were bestowed upon the library by private persons. There are two other copies in the Jewish Theological Seminary Library (New York) and in the Reynolds-Finley Historical Library (Birmingham, Alabama).
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(source: Oriental Manuscripts. SLUB website)
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Administrative / Biographical history
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The University Library was established in 1828, serving as the library of the Königlich-Sächsische Technische Bildungsanstalt (Royal Saxon Technical College). In the 1830s, the College was located next to the Picture Gallery (today's Museum of Transport) near the Jüdenhof, and the library collection was housed on the ground floor. In 1840, the library was relocated to the Landhaus. When the Royal Polytechnic School or Royal Saxon Polytechnic (after 1790, Technische Hochschule) moved to a new building south of the main railway station, the library also followed it. For the first time, a reading room was available to the public. In the meanwhile, the collection had grown significantly.
World War II brought severe changes to the university library. It lost its home, as well as a considerable part of its holdings and catalogues. After the war, the collection was composed of about 55,000 volumes. Then, in 1945, it was relocated to the former fraternity house of the "Erato" singers' society on today's site of the Dresden University of Technology's rectorate.
From 1948 to 1958, under the direction of Helene Benndorf (1897-1984), the library's subject catalogue and central catalogue were reconstructed, and the Patentschriftstelle (Patent Office) reopened. In 1991, the Technische Hochschule was renamed as Technische Universität (TU) and the library became labelled as Universitätsbibliothek (University Library). Then, it expanded with the aggregation of the branch libraries of Law, Business and Economics.
After the merging of the State Library and the University Library, the office building "Dre.Punct" became the seat of the general management and administration of the new Sächsische Landesbibliothek – Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Dresden (Saxon State Library - Dresden State and University Library). From 1999 to 2002, a new central building on the Technical University of Dresden campus was built, which opened for users on August 1, 2002.
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(source: History of the SLUB. SLUB website)
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System of arrangement
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the collection is organized under the general rules of libraries
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Author of the description
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Carla Vieira, 2022
