Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 2005. 430 С. + 15 Farbtab (Verzeichnis orientalischer Handschriften in Deutschland: Islamische Handschriften. Band XXXVII. Teil 4)

Postmodern science has often criticized classical European orientalism for schematizing and simplifying the image of the Muslim East, exaggerating the role of the written word in it [Colonna, 1987; Said, 2003]. Recognizing the justice of these reproaches, we must not forget that it is precisely classical Oriental studies of the XIX-XX centuries. We owe it to the creation of a colossal scientific and reference apparatus, first of all multi-volume dictionaries, catalogues and descriptions, without which the past, and sometimes the present, of the Middle East and other Muslim regions would be closed to us. Itinerant Orientalist enthusiasts of the colonial era have described, collected, and systematized a vast body of factual material on the history of Islam. In addition, there is a rather acute shortage of good Oriental descriptions in the humanities today. Carried away by the subversion of the general theories and cliches of colonial times, Orientalists of the late twentieth century paid too little attention to the collection and processing of sources.

In this regard, it is necessary to recognize the importance of the ongoing publication of collections collected by the classics of European Oriental studies. Among such publications stands out

Manuscripts of the Max Freiherr von Oppenheim Foundation (Cologne), described by Beata Wiesmuller. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Publishing House, 2005, 430 p. + 15 tsvt.pl. (Description of the Eastern manuscripts of Germany: Islamic Manuscripts, vol. XXXVII. Part 4).

page 199

VOHD (Verzeichnis orientalischer Hand-schriften in Deutschland), a large project of descriptions of Eastern manuscripts in Germany, started by German orientalists with the support of a number of foundations in the early 60s of the XX century.The 37th volume of VOHD includes catalogues of the largest collections on Islam. Its first two issues, dedicated to the states of North Rhine-Westphalia and Thuringia, appeared in 1999 and 2001 (Gotz, 1999; Sobieroj, 2001). Three more issues of descriptions of the collections of Bavaria and Kiel are being prepared [Islamische Handschriften-Sammlungen; Haase; Sobieroj]. The subject of this review is the catalog of manuscripts of the Max von Oppenheim Foundation (Cologne), published by the famous German orientalist Beata Wiesmuller. The book is a good example of a meticulous, conveniently constructed Oriental description with a detailed introduction.

Before giving a description of the publication and collection, it is worth saying a few words about the folding of the Cologne collection of Arabic and Persian manuscripts on Islam. The collection is divided into two collections. The larger, so-called old collection consists of 132 manuscripts and 10 collections of the XI-first quarter of the XX century in Arabic, exported in 1892-1929 from the Middle East and North Africa by the famous German Orientalist, archaeologist and diplomat Max von Oppenheim (1860-1946), who became famous for his excavations in Northern Syria ancient settlements of the 5th-4th millennium BC Tell Khalaf. Oppenheim knew Arabic well. He was keenly interested in the past and present of the world of Islam, and during the First World War he directed the anti-English pan-Islamic propaganda service in the Ottoman Empire. In accordance with his interests, Oppenheim collected a library of Arabic manuscripts. Some samples of it were exhibited in museums in Berlin and Munich in 1910. In 1922, the collection was transferred to the Oppenheim Institute of Oriental Studies at the Tell Khalaf Museum in Berlin, which was transformed into the Oppenheim Foundation in 1929.

The museum and institute were destroyed by Allied bombing during World War II. However, Werner Kaskel, a student of Oppenheim, managed to save most of the manuscripts and transfer them in 1948 to the University of Cologne, where he became a professor of Oriental Studies. The Oppenheim Foundation, which resumed its activity in Cologne in the 60s and 70s of the 20th century, added a new collection of 65 separate and 28 combined Arabic and Persian manuscripts of the 15th and 20th centuries to the Oppenheim collection. They were purchased from Abdoljawad Falathuri (1926-1997). A native of Isfahan, Iran, where he received a good traditional education and reached the highest level of the Shiite Imamite scholar of theology and law (mujtahid), Falaturi studied and then worked in Germany from the mid-1950s. From 1975 to 1991, he taught Persian and Islamic studies at the University of Cologne. His interests included religious philosophy and dogmatics, the links between Islam, Christianity and Judaism, and their reflection in Islamic education. These themes defined the selection of manuscripts in his collection, mostly collected in Iran.

Among the oriental manuscripts of the Oppenheim Foundation in Cologne, there are no particularly ancient lists or unique ones. 55 copies of the Qur'an - from individual fragments in Naskh, Kufi and Maghreb to complete copies-give a good idea of the art of Arabic calligraphy from the time of the Arab Caliphate to the beginning of the 20th century. The oldest parchment document purchased by Oppenheim in Egypt is a contract for the purchase of a part of a house in Fayum, Egypt in Dhu-l-ka'deh 414 / January 1024 (No. 6 of the catalog). Judging by the names of the buyer and seller, the letter came from a Coptic background. The earliest book of the old collection is a copy of the Mu'tazilite tafsir Zamakhshari (d. 1144), the correspondence of which, as appears from the colophon of the manuscript, was completed on 5 Rad-zhaba 674/25 January 1275 (N 70). Among the rare old manuscripts is a fragment of the Malik compendium on Fiqh "al-Mudawwana al-Kubra" on three parchment leaves (N 195). The most ancient manuscript of the new Falaturi collection is Sharh al-Misbah by Ibn al-Aswad an-Nixari (c. 1397). This is a commentary on al-Mutarrizi's book on Arabic grammar, copied in Libya to Rabi ' awwal 843 / August 1439 (N 269).

For Islamic scholars, the manuscripts of the XVI - early XX centuries that predominate in the collection are of particular interest. The most interesting are the writings and letters of Sufis in North Africa and literature from Shiite madrasas in Iran. Some of them are rarities. Oppenheim acquired works on exegesis and Hadith studies (N 129), fundamentals of law (N 192,214), and Sufi ethics (N 130) by the Algerian Marabout Muhammad b. 'Ali al-Sanusi (d. 1859), who founded the Senussi brotherhood in 1837 and became famous for his participation in the jihad against the European conquerors of Libya. The life of the founder of the brotherhood and his son Muhammad al-Mahdi (1844-1902), the Senussi organization is described in the travel notes of al-Hash'isha and Shaikh al-Yusuf (N 260, 261), an elegy (marsiyah)

page 200

on the death of Muhammad al-Sanusi (n. 308), genealogy and biography of al-Sanusi and his son al-Mahdi (N.334 - 340). The Oppenheim collection also contains fragments of the treatise "Nubza min Kalam..." by the founder of the brotherhood of Rahmaniyah 'Abd ar-Rahman (d. 1793-94), nicknamed" Two-Grave " (Abu-l-Kabrain) (N 332), letters to the shaykh of the brotherhood of Darkawiyah from the French administration of Algeria (1882; N 132, 133, 316), a sample of calligraphy of a shaikh from Senegal (1910; N 1).

Special attention should be paid to the works and textbooks of Shia Imamites that are well presented in the Falaturi collection. In this respect, the Cologne collection stands out among the European (and even Russian) collections, which generally contain few manuscripts that came out of the Shiite environment. Among the rare ones are the gloss on dogmatics "Tajrid al-Kalam" by Nasir al-din at-Tusi (d. 1274) (986/1576, N 94), an extract (mukhtasar) from the commentary of Ja'far al-Hilli (d. 1277) to the legal treatise of Hamza al-Daylami (d. 1070-1071) "al-Marasim al -' ala-viya fi-l-fiqh "(1036 - 1037/1627 - 1628 198), the treatise "Ka'ida fi nafi ad-darar" on the non-harm of Murtada al-Ansari (d. 1864) (1278-1280/1862 - 1864, N 193), two works on the marriage contract and a collection of fatwas of Mufti Muhammad ar-Ramli (d. 1596) (1872, 1853 and 1895, N 215,216,218). In addition, the new collection contains 8 manuscripts of the Shiite theological movement of the 19th century. Shaikhiyah, from which grew the famous syncretic teaching of the Babids (N 103, 104, 111, 124, 229, 230, 306, 329).

Along with manuscripts on Islam, the collection has a small but valuable collection of late samples of Arabic correspondence and historical writings collected by Oppenheim during his travels and excavations, including Christian church history and apologetics. Many of them are unique. There is a letter dated 1305/1887-1888 from the above-mentioned Muhammad al-Mahdi to the head of the Senussi brotherhood branch in Murzouk (Libya) (No. 318). Among the rarities is Husayn Hilmi's chronicle "Barikat al-suyuf al -' Arabiya fi Sirat ahfad Taimur Pasha al-Miliya "(1343/1924, N 324) about the actions in 1860 against the Maronites of the Druze-Bedouin union of tribes of Syria, with whose leaders Max von Oppenheim was friends. Here we should also mention the chronicle of Ibn Ghannam (d. 1811) "Kitab al-ghazawat al-bayaniyah wa-l-futuhat ar-rabbaniyah..." about the campaigns of the Wahhabis of Arabia until 1797 (N 322), "Ta'rih Mardin" by ' Abd as-Salam al-Mardini, starting with the Arab conquest (19/640) until the establishment of the French mandate government in Jazira (Syria) (1924) (1911; No. 323).

Among the two Arabic-Christian manuscripts of the collection, a small fragment of a polemical work against the Jews on the divine nature of Jesus Christ (No. 341) stands out. The text is written on parchment of Coptic origin in the eastern Kufi script. The author and title of the essay are not specified. Another example of late Arab-Christian literature is provided by an anonymous chronicle of semi-legendary content about the spread of Christian monasteries in Northern Mesopotamia from 589 to 1694. The manuscript originates from the city of Mardin (in the south-east of modern Turkey), near the Oppenheim excavation site in Tell Khalaf. This is an extract from another chronicle of 1891, based on the writings of five Arab-Christian authors - Bazhiya al-Kafartuti, deacon Shim'un an-Nasibi (c. 1543.4), Bishop Shmu'il al-Qaw-kabi, Father Mush of Ra's al - ' Ain, and deacon Nahum at- Tibyasi. According to the number of dioceses in Northern Mesopotamia, the chronicle is divided into 5 chapters.

The Oppenheim collection is interesting not only for its rarities, but also for copies and lists of works known from other European collections. It contains samples of textbooks on the entire range of subjects of traditional Islamic education among Sunni and Shiite Imamites. Using Beata Wiesmuller's catalog, the reader can easily imagine the composition, chronological and geographical layout of the collection. The description of the manuscripts follows a convenient general scheme adopted in VOHD publications: descriptions of the Qur'an, its seven readings (qira'a) and Quranic exegesis (tafsir) (section II); hadiths (III); dogmatics (IV); Sufism (V); works on the foundations of faith (usul ad-din) (VI); fundamentals (Usul al-fiqh) and branches (furu') of law, fatwas (VII-VIII); secondary and higher education support in Madras ethics (IX); geography (X); zoology (XI); medicine (XII); Arabic grammar (XIII); dictionaries (XIII); rhetoric (XIV); fiction with poetry (XV) and history (XV). The most complete collection includes the Qur'an and Hadith, dogma, law, philosophy, grammar and rhetoric.

Despite the relatively small size of the collection, all available manuscripts are described in detail and uniformly. Only a small number (16) of defective copies could not be accurately identified. The description system is as follows. After the archaeographic description of the manuscript, the author's name and the title of the work are given (in Arabic and Latin transcription-

page 201

the beginning ('unwan) and end (colophon) of the manuscript (in Arabic), the date and name of the scribe, and finally a brief description of the work with the most frequent glosses. If possible, parallels are indicated for other directories. Unfortunately, Max von Oppenheim did not leave any notes on the receipt of manuscripts in his library. Therefore, the compiler had to start from indirect information available in the nisbas of scribes, owner's glosses and postscripts in the colophon of works. One can only marvel at the breadth of the" geography " of the collection: from Muslim Spain (al-Andalus) and Morocco in the west and Senegal in the south to Northern Mesopotamia and the Crimean Khanate in the northeast (Tafsir al-Baydawi 1744 from Gozlev/Yevpatoria, N 71).

Summing up the results of this review, we can rightly congratulate the compiler and readers of the catalog with another necessary and well-founded Oriental description, which sheds new light on the treasures of Islamic knowledge collected by orientalists of the colonial era in manuscript collections in Germany. I would like to hope that at least some copies of this catalog will find a place in the largest Oriental libraries in Russia.

list of literature

Colonna F. Critique de l'orientalisme ou critique du scripturalisme? // Colonna F. Savants pay sans. Elements d'his-toire sociale sur I'Algerie rurale. Alger, 1987.

Gotz M. Islamische Handschriften-Sammlungen. Teil. 1. Nordrhein-Westfalen. Stuttgart, 1999 (Verzeichnis der ori-entalischen Handschriften in Deutschland. Bd. XXXVII).

Haase C.P. Islamische Handschriften-Sammlungen. Teil. 3. Kiel. Stuttgart (in print).

Islamische Handschriften-Sammlungen. Teil. 2. Stuttgart (in print).

Said E.W. Orientalism. L., 2003 (First ed. N.Y., 1978).

Sobieroj F. Islamische Handschriften-Sammlungen. Teil. 5. Thuringen. Stuttgart, 2001.

Sobieroj F. Islamische Handschriften-Sammlungen. Teil. 6. Munchen. Stuttgart (in print).

Permanent link to this publication: