Acknowledgments
For all their differences, the seventeenth-century protagonists of this volume, Hiob Ludolf and Johann Michael Wansleben shared an acute awareness of the importance of collaboration and funding in enabling scholarship. This remains true four centuries later and it is with pleasure that we acknowledge the debts we have incurred. The idea for this volume goes back to a conference, Hiob Ludolf und Johann Michael Wansleben – Orientalistik, Politik und Geschichte zwischen Gotha und Afrika, 1650–1700, held at the Gotha Research Centre of the University of Erfurt in 2015. The conference was part of the international project Encounters with the Orient in Early Modern European Scholarship, funded by the HERA joint research programme, 2013–2016.1 In its later stages, work on this book was also supported by the ERC synergy project The European Qurʾan. Islamic Scripture in European Culture and Religion, 1150–1850.2
We are very grateful to Alastair Hamilton for his invaluable editorial support. We would also like to thank Raschida Mansour of the Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg, Frankfurt am Main for her generous and kind assistance and the staff of the Forschungsbibliothek Gotha for theirs, as well as Dirk Bakker of Brill for his thorough editorial corrections.
Asaph Ben-Tov, Wolfenbüttel
Jan Loop, Copenhagen
Martin Mulsow, Erfurt
This project received funding from the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme for research, technological development and demonstration under the grant agreement no. 291827. It involved the following project partners: Prof. Charles Burnett (Warburg Institute, project leader), Prof. Jan Loop (University of Copenhagen), Prof. Outi Marisalo (University of Jyväskylä), Prof. Martin Mulsow (University of Erfurt/Gotha Research Centre), Prof. Bernd Roling (Freie Universität Berlin), and Prof. Gerard Wiegers (University of Amsterdam).
This project received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 810141.