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Papers by Paul Babinski

Taking Stock: Media Inventories in the German Nineteenth Century, 2024

The European Qurʾān: Encounters with the Holy Text of Islam from the Ninth to the Twentieth Century, 2024

Erudition and the Republic of Letters, 2024

This essay examines the relationship between war and European Qur’anic studies from the mediaeval... more This essay examines the relationship between war and European Qur’anic studies from the mediaeval period to the nineteenth century. It surveys manuscript sources that bear traces of wartime looting and the work of Muslim captives and converts. It argues that war played a recurring role in European oriental studies, helping to shape its practices, aims, and geography. In their early stages, war contributed to a broader shift
in academic oriental studies toward the study of the Qur’an in its multilingual Islamic intellectual contexts. Later, as colonial expansion facilitated access to new sources, illicitly acquired manuscripts, especially early Qur’an fragments, were instrumental for historical scholarship on the Qur’an.

Sammler - Bibliothekare - Forscher. Zur Geschichte der orientalischen Sammlungen an der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, 2022

The first major German collections of oriental manuscripts took shape in the seventeenth century,... more The first major German collections of oriental manuscripts took shape in the seventeenth century, a period that saw the growth of similar collections across non-Ottoman Europe. 1 Their formation was linked to expanding global trade, which brought books along with other goods to the centers of orientalist study from as far away as India, Indonesia, and China. However, the bulk of the orientalist's library was of more proximate origin and, above all, of Ottoman extraction. This was particularly true in the German lands, which were closer to Ottoman Europe and less integrated into long-distance maritime trade. The early modern German orientalist's manuscript had usually either traveled westward as war booty from Hungary or SouthEastern Europe, or come indirectly-often through Amsterdam or Leiden-from Istanbul and the cities of the Eastern Mediterranean. The foundation of these German collections was rooted in two developments at Europe's opposite ends. The first was the rise of Istanbul as a center for the study and collection of Islamic manuscripts in the centuries after its Ottoman conquest, and the emergence of a rich Ottoman scholarly tradition in Arabic and Turkish. 2 By the seventeenth century, the Ottoman capital was ground zero for orientalist collectors, as one traveler put it, "the sea, into which all the lesser rivers have emptied themselves", where manuscripts streamed in from throughout the Islamic world. 3 The trilingual Ottoman tradition of scholarly study was also represented in the lib-1 I would like to thank Christoph Rauch and Boris Liebrenz for their help and input as I undertook the research for this essay as a Fulbright scholar in Germany. Portions of this essay appeared first in my dissertation, Babinski, Paul: World Literature in Practice. The Orientalist's Manuscript between the Ottoman Empire and Germany. PhD diss.,

Dissertation, 2020

This dissertation traces how European “oriental studies” emerged from a sustained encounter with ... more This dissertation traces how European “oriental studies” emerged from a sustained encounter with an earlier Ottoman intellectual tradition. In the seventeenth century, books acquired in cities like Istanbul or looted from Ottoman Europe formed the basis of many of the first major collections of Islamic manuscripts in non-Ottoman Europe, and Western European scholars who specialized in the study of Islamic texts worked mostly from sixteenth and seventeenth-century Ottoman commentaries, dictionaries, translations, and bibliographies, often with the help of Muslim scholars. “World Literature in Practice” builds on a broad survey of Islamic manuscripts from early modern German collections to reconstruct the scholarly practices of orientalists and their collaborators. Examining their notes and marginalia, it uncovers an early chapter in the history of world literature during the two centuries before Goethe coined the term, as Ottoman letters became the foundation of orientalist literature.

Three chapters follow the strands of this encounter from the early seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. Chapter one looks at the first orientalist readers of Saʿdī’s Gulistān, a work of classical Persian literature which orientalists discovered through its various Turkish and Arabic commentaries and translations. Chapter two follows the formation of diplomatic language schools founded to train interpreters for work in the Ottoman Empire, and the generations of diplomat-orientalists they educated. Chapter three examines how orientalists collected and organized information from Islamic manuscripts in the decades after the formation of major manuscript collections in the second half of the seventeenth century, culminating in the work of Johann Jacob Reiske. A conclusion looks broadly at the transformation of orientalist practices over the early modern period.

Lias 42/2, 2019

This article reconstructs how the study of Persian literature in non-Ottoman Europe developed ove... more This article reconstructs how the study of Persian literature in non-Ottoman Europe developed over the course of the seventeenth century through a sustained encounter with an earlier Ottoman philological tradition. Focusing on the case of Saʿdī’s Gulistān, this article examines the manuscripts of the orientalists who first collected, read, and translated the work to reveal their sources, reading practices, and collaborations with Persian-speaking scribal assistants. These efforts culminated in the 1651 publication of Georg Gentius’ Rosarium Politicum, the first complete translation of the Gulistān in non-Ottoman Europe. After detailing the working practices of orientalists like Adam Olearius, Jacob Golius, and Gilbert Gaulmin, this article shows how Gentius encoun-tered the text in Istanbul through the Turkish commentary of Aḥmed Sūdī, which he studied under the supervision of an Ottoman scholar, and how subsequent generations of readers read Gentius’ translation alongside earlier commentaries.

Book Reviews by Paul Babinski

Burlington Magazine, 2020

Taking Stock: Media Inventories in the German Nineteenth Century, 2024

The European Qurʾān: Encounters with the Holy Text of Islam from the Ninth to the Twentieth Century, 2024

Erudition and the Republic of Letters, 2024

This essay examines the relationship between war and European Qur’anic studies from the mediaeval... more This essay examines the relationship between war and European Qur’anic studies from the mediaeval period to the nineteenth century. It surveys manuscript sources that bear traces of wartime looting and the work of Muslim captives and converts. It argues that war played a recurring role in European oriental studies, helping to shape its practices, aims, and geography. In their early stages, war contributed to a broader shift
in academic oriental studies toward the study of the Qur’an in its multilingual Islamic intellectual contexts. Later, as colonial expansion facilitated access to new sources, illicitly acquired manuscripts, especially early Qur’an fragments, were instrumental for historical scholarship on the Qur’an.

Sammler - Bibliothekare - Forscher. Zur Geschichte der orientalischen Sammlungen an der Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, 2022

The first major German collections of oriental manuscripts took shape in the seventeenth century,... more The first major German collections of oriental manuscripts took shape in the seventeenth century, a period that saw the growth of similar collections across non-Ottoman Europe. 1 Their formation was linked to expanding global trade, which brought books along with other goods to the centers of orientalist study from as far away as India, Indonesia, and China. However, the bulk of the orientalist's library was of more proximate origin and, above all, of Ottoman extraction. This was particularly true in the German lands, which were closer to Ottoman Europe and less integrated into long-distance maritime trade. The early modern German orientalist's manuscript had usually either traveled westward as war booty from Hungary or SouthEastern Europe, or come indirectly-often through Amsterdam or Leiden-from Istanbul and the cities of the Eastern Mediterranean. The foundation of these German collections was rooted in two developments at Europe's opposite ends. The first was the rise of Istanbul as a center for the study and collection of Islamic manuscripts in the centuries after its Ottoman conquest, and the emergence of a rich Ottoman scholarly tradition in Arabic and Turkish. 2 By the seventeenth century, the Ottoman capital was ground zero for orientalist collectors, as one traveler put it, "the sea, into which all the lesser rivers have emptied themselves", where manuscripts streamed in from throughout the Islamic world. 3 The trilingual Ottoman tradition of scholarly study was also represented in the lib-1 I would like to thank Christoph Rauch and Boris Liebrenz for their help and input as I undertook the research for this essay as a Fulbright scholar in Germany. Portions of this essay appeared first in my dissertation, Babinski, Paul: World Literature in Practice. The Orientalist's Manuscript between the Ottoman Empire and Germany. PhD diss.,

Dissertation, 2020

This dissertation traces how European “oriental studies” emerged from a sustained encounter with ... more This dissertation traces how European “oriental studies” emerged from a sustained encounter with an earlier Ottoman intellectual tradition. In the seventeenth century, books acquired in cities like Istanbul or looted from Ottoman Europe formed the basis of many of the first major collections of Islamic manuscripts in non-Ottoman Europe, and Western European scholars who specialized in the study of Islamic texts worked mostly from sixteenth and seventeenth-century Ottoman commentaries, dictionaries, translations, and bibliographies, often with the help of Muslim scholars. “World Literature in Practice” builds on a broad survey of Islamic manuscripts from early modern German collections to reconstruct the scholarly practices of orientalists and their collaborators. Examining their notes and marginalia, it uncovers an early chapter in the history of world literature during the two centuries before Goethe coined the term, as Ottoman letters became the foundation of orientalist literature.

Three chapters follow the strands of this encounter from the early seventeenth century to the mid-nineteenth century. Chapter one looks at the first orientalist readers of Saʿdī’s Gulistān, a work of classical Persian literature which orientalists discovered through its various Turkish and Arabic commentaries and translations. Chapter two follows the formation of diplomatic language schools founded to train interpreters for work in the Ottoman Empire, and the generations of diplomat-orientalists they educated. Chapter three examines how orientalists collected and organized information from Islamic manuscripts in the decades after the formation of major manuscript collections in the second half of the seventeenth century, culminating in the work of Johann Jacob Reiske. A conclusion looks broadly at the transformation of orientalist practices over the early modern period.

Lias 42/2, 2019

This article reconstructs how the study of Persian literature in non-Ottoman Europe developed ove... more This article reconstructs how the study of Persian literature in non-Ottoman Europe developed over the course of the seventeenth century through a sustained encounter with an earlier Ottoman philological tradition. Focusing on the case of Saʿdī’s Gulistān, this article examines the manuscripts of the orientalists who first collected, read, and translated the work to reveal their sources, reading practices, and collaborations with Persian-speaking scribal assistants. These efforts culminated in the 1651 publication of Georg Gentius’ Rosarium Politicum, the first complete translation of the Gulistān in non-Ottoman Europe. After detailing the working practices of orientalists like Adam Olearius, Jacob Golius, and Gilbert Gaulmin, this article shows how Gentius encoun-tered the text in Istanbul through the Turkish commentary of Aḥmed Sūdī, which he studied under the supervision of an Ottoman scholar, and how subsequent generations of readers read Gentius’ translation alongside earlier commentaries.

Burlington Magazine, 2020