Prophets, Poets and Scholars: The Collections of the Middle Eastern Library of Leiden University

Leiden University has an impressive collection of primary texts in various Middle Eastern languages such as Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Berber languages, Hebrew, and Ethiopian. These texts are contained in objects made of parchment, paper, and leather, which are often artistically shaped and ingeniously constructed. In addition, the university holds the written and printed records of 400 years of scholarly activity by Western orientalists. Currently, the Leiden University Library is the custodian of the largest Middle Eastern and Islamic cultural collection in the Netherlands, a unique position that is scarcely known to the public.

Dr Arnoud Vrolijk is Interpres Legati Warneriani and curator of Oriental manuscripts and rare books at Leiden University Libraries. He has published extensively on the Leiden Oriental collections and the history of Arabic scholarship in the Netherlands.

Dr Kasper van Ommen is curator of early printed and rare books and coordinator of the Scaliger Institute at Leiden University Libraries. In 2020 he defended his doctoral thesis on Joseph Justus Scaliger’s Oriental bequest in the Leiden University Library.

Dr Karin Scheper heads the conservation workshop in the Leiden University Library, where for many years she has focused on the study of the materiality of the Oriental collections. She received a PhD (2014) and has published a book and a range of articles on the subject.

Dr Tijmen Baarda defended his PhD dissertation in 2020 about the use of Arabic, Syriac and other languages among the Christians of Iraq at the beginning of the twentieth century. Until 2022 he was subject librarian for Middle Eastern studies at Leiden University Libraries.