Historical Research and Resources in Damascus

Abstract

Damascus has a long and distinguished history as a center for scholars and scholarship. The Umayyad Mosque has been a hub for Muslim scholars since the first Islamic century. Under the Ayyubids and Mamluks, a flurry of madrasa-building brought professional scholars to Damascus from all corners of the Muslim world. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Damascus, many scattered manuscript collections were consolidated into the National Library, housed in the Mamluk-era Madrasa al-Zahiriyya, the pride of Syrian scholars in the age of Arab nationalism. With French rule in 1920 came an army of researchers and catalogers who established one of the region’s best library collections at the Institut Français des Études Arabes à Damas. And, in 1984, the Asad Library was established to serve as a national library and to house manuscript collections from around the country. The mid-1990s is an auspicious time for American researchers in Syria because of the establishment of the American Research Institute in Syria, Inc. (ARIS), a consortium of American universities that has been working for the past several years to establish an institute for research and residence in Damascus on par with the European facilities there. The Institute has yet to be officially approved by the Syrian government, and present efforts depend on the outcome of regional political discussions.

A Majorcan in Baghdad. Al-Ḥumaydī’s Jamʿ bayn al-Ṣaḥīḥayn and Its Reception in the Mashriq

“…8 The biographical dictionaries and al-Ḥumaydī's own works supply the names of the many scholars with whom he studied before and after his departure from al-Andalus. 9 In the postscript to his || 6 As reported by al- Dhahabī, Siyar (1417/1996 . 8 See on him Sellheim, "al-Khaṭīb al-Baghdādī", EI 2 ; Malti Douglas 1977.…”

“…15 On the Shāfiʿī Ibn Ṭarkhān, see al- Dhahabī, Siyar (1417/1996al-Dhahabī, Tahdhīb (1412/1991, where it is stated that he spent much time with al-Ḥumaydī (ṣaḥiba al-Ḥumaydī wa-lāzamahu). He also received several other works from the author, namely Jadhwat al-muqtabis, Kitāb al-Mutashākih fī asmāʾ al-fawākih and Kitāb Nawādir al-aṭibbāʾ, which he transmitted to the noted Andalusi religious scholar Abū Bakr b. al-ʿArabī (d. 543 H/1148 CE), through whom the works reached Ibn Khayr; see Ibn Khayr, Fahrasa (2009), 281-282, 472, nos.…”

“…The work is discussed in detail in al-Asadī 1424/2003. 19 On al-Jawzaqī, see al- Dhahabī, Siyar (1417/1996. The manuscript of his Jamʿ bayn al-Ṣaḥīḥayn can be viewed online: https://www.alukah.net/library/0/83900/ (last accessed Aug. 9, 2019).…”

“…It is not clear when Ibn al-Athīr managed to write his various works, including Jāmiʿ al-uṣūl. In this compilation the author combines the two Ṣaḥīḥs with four other collections, namely the Muwaṭṭaʾ of Mālik b. Anas and the || 40 On Ibn al-Baṭṭī, see al- Dhahabī, Siyar (1417/1996al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī (1381al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī ( -1425al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī ( /1962al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī ( -2004al-Ṣafadī, al-Wāfī ( ), 3: 209, no. 1196al-Dhahabī, Tārīkh al-islām (1410/1990 Sunan of al-Tirmidhī, Abū Dāwūd and al-Nasāʾī, which taken together constitute in his view the fundamental corpus of reliable traditions, generally accepted and used by fuqahāʾ and other scholars.…”

“…-174, no. 1974;al-Dhahabī, Siyar (1417/1996Ibn Kathīr, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya (2004), 2: 712-713, no. 784;al-Subkī, Ṭabaqāt al-Shāfiʿiyya (1383/1964), 8: 324-325, no.…”