In this photo essay, I use the story of a private manuscript library belonging to the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« family in Jerba, Tunisia to reflect on my foray into the world of social codicology and the historical anthropology of rumour surrounding manuscript collections on the island.1 In some cases, stories about manuscripts in Jerba often have little to do with manuscripts. Instead, they convey information about the people associated with them. In other cases, rumours and stories about manuscripts contain information that is anachronistic, contradictory, or even blatantly untrue. Drawing inspiration from Luise Whiteâs work on vampire narratives in colonial East Africa,2 I maintain that the rumours about manuscripts and libraries need not contain information that is true in order to convey important information about people and manuscripts in Jerba.
Through the images that follow, I explore different moments in the recent history of the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« family library. I use the libraryâs history to think through the relationship between manuscript collections and accounts of their histories. I conclude by reflecting on how the rumours surrounding the history of this library communicate as much about social dynamics in Jerba as they do about manuscripts there. In doing so, I connect the al-BaÊ¿á¹urÄ« library and its story to this volumeâs theme of social codicology.
Figure 8.1
This image comes from a photocopy of a manuscript copy of KitÄb badʾ al-islÄm wa-sharÄʾiÊ¿ al-dÄ«n, also known as the KitÄb Ibn SallÄm. The original manuscript was held in the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« library, where it was discovered in the second half of the twentieth century by Tunisian historian SÄlim Bin YaÊ¿qÅ«b. The text was edited collaboratively by Werner Schwartz in the 1980s, and it was from this photocopy that Schwartz edited the text. The photocopy was given to him by the late Libyan historian and Ibadi shaykh, Ê¿AlÄ« YaḥyÄ MuÊ¿ammar in the year 1979
Image graciously provided to author by Werner Schwartz
The manuscript pictured here was originally held in a library belonging to the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« family on the island of Jerba in Tunisia. The al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ«s have a long history in Northern Africa and came to Jerba from the nearby Nafusa Mountains of what is today northwestern Libya. The family name originated as âal-Bughá¹Å«rÄ«,â with the main difference between the two names in writing being a dot over the Arabic letter Ê¿ayn.3 The manuscript library associated with them likely crystalized as a family collection in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.4 Like many families in Jerbaâs past, the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ«s were Ibadi Muslims. Their manuscript library held texts by both Ibadi and non-Ibadi authors, with many of the manuscripts being written in the hands of the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ«s themselves. By far the most famous text is the one pictured here, known as the KitÄb badʾ al-islÄm wa-sharÄÊ¿iʾ al-dÄ«n or simply the KitÄb Ibn SallÄm, after its attributed author Ibn SallÄm al-IbÄá¸Ä« (d. third/ninth century). Arguably the oldest historical text written by an autochthonous North African Muslim, the text had long been thought lost until a copy was found by the Jerban historian, SÄlim Bin YaÊ¿qÅ«b (d. 1991) in the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« library.5
The image seen here is a photocopy of that manuscript, provided to me by Dr. Werner Schwartz. Schwartz worked together with Shaykh SÄlim Bin YaÊ¿qÅ«b, who had borrowed the original manuscript from the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« library and used it to edit and to publish this text in the 1980s.6 The fact that the authors were willing to use a single manuscript copy for their edition speaks to the precious nature of its contents and the importance of the library where it originated. Moreover, the KitÄb Ibn SallÄm was one of a handful of unusual Ibadi texts in the library, including the sixth/twelfth-century biographical work known as the Siyar mashÄyikh Jabal NafÅ«sa.7
Given the widely recognized significance of these manuscripts and others in the collection, it came as quite a shock to the island when contents of the-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« manuscript library went up in flames in the second half of the twentieth century.
Figure 8.2
A photograph of team members (from left: author, an anonymous team member, and Laroussi Ben Tardayet) from EAP0993 âConserving Endangered Archives in Jerba; The al-BÄsÄ« Family Library Project,â a project funded by Arcadia and administered by the British Library as part of the Endangered Archives Programme. The project generated interest in manuscripts on the island over the course of the summer 2017, as we began collecting data on manuscript collections in Jerba, Tunisia
Photograph: Ali Boujdidi, 2017
As part of an Endangered Archives Programme Pilot Project grant, funded by Arcadia and administered by the British Library, my Jerban colleague Dr. Ali Boujdidi and I gathered information and stories in Jerba about family manuscript collections like the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« library over the course of the summer of 2017.
The core of our pilot project was the digitization of a library belonging to the El Bessi (al-BÄsÄ«) family, comprising some 200 titles and dozens of family documents (see fig. 8.2).8 Alongside this digitization project, we also began planning for its expansion in the future. We gathered stories and information about manuscripts in Jerba with the aim of compiling them and establishing relationships with the owners for future library digitization and conservation projects. The method of gathering stories was informal and haphazard since we initially intended only to gather information on the existence of collections.
The notes from those conversations accrued over time, and it was in this context that I began collecting accounts of different collections and became aware of the large number of rumours and secrets surrounding different collections. People would often visit us at the research centre to share stories and information about manuscripts. These stories were conveyed to me as part of a research team that belonged to a wide network of people in Jerba interested in the islandâs history, culture, and family politics. The stories were all related in Arabic and my ability to understand these storiesâwhen necessary, relying on the clarifications of friends and colleaguesâallowed me access to them. As part of this team, I heard these stories together with others as they were related by friends or colleagues visiting the centre. In most cases, they were not relayed clandestinely. Quite the opposite, the person relating a story might even restart their account to ensure that anyone who entered the room later could follow the narrative. In some cases, however, the person telling the story would caution against circulating it, especially if it implicated a person or family with whom they did not have good relationship. Regardless of the circumstances, we never recorded audio or video versions of these accounts. My position as a researcher was complemented by my familiarity with Jerba, gained through frequent trips to the island for both research and visits to my extended family.
As for the stories themselves, often they included accounts of collections that still existed but whose owners kept them secret for various reasons. In other cases, stories were about collections that had been intentionally destroyed by their owners or by others. The methods for doing so ranged from throwing them in an old well due to the manuscriptsâ magical properties to dramatic book burnings in public or private.9
The story of the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« library fell into the latter category. A variety of stories surround the history of this collection, but almost all end in the destruction of the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« library in an intentionally lit fire. I had heard versions of this story several years before while working in Jerba, but I began to systematically collect different accounts of it in the summers of 2017 and 2018.
The results proved unexpected.
Figure 8.3
The cover story of Le Phare (âThe Beaconâ) magazine from February 1980. The story on what became known as âLes événements de Gafsaâ described the attempted coup of the Tunisian government led by Habib Bourghiba. There was an unexpected connection between the history of the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« library and this tense moment in modern Tunisian history. A further unexpected event was my purchase of this magazine on the street in downtown Tunis in the summer of 2017 from a vendor who had served in the unit of the military sent from the capital down to Gafsa as reinforcements for the Tunisian army in the very attack described here
Photo by author of copy in his collection: cover of Le Phare, n. 5, 3â9 February 1980
The aggregated story of the fire that consumed the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« library that I assembled merges local history in Jerba with the national history of Tunisia. During the fieldwork with the Endangered Archives project, we encountered many different versions of the story of this fire. The core narrative that emerged from these stories and subsequent efforts by my colleagues in Jerba to track down members of the family for details goes something like this: Sometime around the year 1980, a member of the family, whom I will call âAḥmad,â was teaching mathematics at a school in the southern Tunisian town of Gafsa. He was there in January 1980, when
[on] January 26 ⦠a band of guerrillas seized police and military installations in the southern phosphate mining centre of Gafsa, hoping to spark a general uprising [against the government of Habib Bourghiba] ⦠At least thirty-seven people (the official estimate), but quite probably many more, died in the battle to regain control of the city. Tunisia accused [Libyan president] Muammar Gaddafi ⦠of training and equipping the attackers.10
Subsequently known as the âAffaire de Gafsaâ or the âÃvénements de Gafsa,â these events marked a defining moment in Tunisian-Libyan relations in the twentieth century. It was major news in national papers and featured in several cover stories from the Tunisian periodical Le Phare pictured here. Yet it also gestured to a more complicated past in the Tunisian national narrative, since it had been organized by militant supporters of Bourghibaâs old political adversary, the Jerban Salah ben Yusuf, who had been assassinated in 1961.11
Aḥmad, whose residence was in the same neighbourhood, was in the middle of the week-long firefight by the Tunisian army to regain control. Although he emerged from the events without any physical injury, the trauma of the event stayed with him. Ultimately unable to cope with it, he returned to his family home in Jerba to live with his father. It was there that sometime between 1980 and 2005, he entered the room where the familyâs manuscript library was stored and set the manuscripts on fire.
In and of itself, the story is remarkable. Additionally, the imprecise date range along with several other details points to the nature of rumours and contradictory historical account of manuscript culture in Jerba.
Figure 8.4
These two charred manuscript fragments hang today on the wall in the reading room of the Association pour la sauvegarde de lâîle de Djerba (ASIDJ) in Houmet Souk, Jerba. The caption above them suggests that they came originally from the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« collection. The story of how they arrived there proved one of the most perplexing accounts of the libraryâs destruction I encountered.
Photo by author, 2015
The two charred fragments in this image, if its caption is to be believed, are some of the few remains from the fire that consumed the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« library.12 I took this photograph years before I began compiling versions of the story, which is why I was surprised to hear an account of the fire in which the person telling me the story claimed to have brought these very folios to the place where they now hang on the wall. Indeed, the two most remarkable and authoritative accounts of the libraryâs destruction came to me from two men who both claim to have seen the charred remains of the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« library with their own eyes.
One was Dr. Ferhat Djaabiri (FarḥÄt al-JaÊ¿bÄ«rÄ«), a retired professor of history and an influential member of the Jerban Ibadi community. In an interview in August 2018 in Tunis, he told me that he had personally known Aḥmadâs father since the 1980s when he was writing his PhD thesis on the history of the Ibadi community in Jerba. Djaabiri had used many manuscripts for his research, and he had wanted to access the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« collection for use in his thesis. When he spoke over the phone with the father, he was told the manuscripts had been lost in a fire. When Djaabiri expressed disbelief, the owner invited him to the family home where Djaabiri saw with his own eyes the burned shelves and a single charred manuscript fragment remaining. He emphasized to me that he remembered this well, since it was just before his thesis defence in 1986.13
I had been told to talk to Djaabiri by another eyewitness and the owner of another prominent manuscript collection in Jerba, Said El Barouni (SaÊ¿Ä«d al-BÄrÅ«nÄ«). In an earlier interview with him, I heard an account that added another layer of complication to the story. El Barouni had told me in March 2017 that he recalled that the fire had taken place sometime in the 1990sâalthough he was the first to make the connection with events in Gafsa and specifically mentioned the events that had taken place around 1980.
When I had the chance to interview him in August 2018, he said that he had finally been able to narrow down the date to a specific week. He told me that he remembered the event well because he had heard over the phone that the fire was taking place. He went in his car, accompanied by a group of French volunteers who had come to Jerba to help restore the al-BÄsÄ« mosque (the same mosque where the manuscript library that was the object of our pilot project had been held for two centuries). As they approached the house, they saw charred fragments of manuscripts being whisked up in the wind. More remarkably, he told me that he and his French guests even collected these fragments as souvenirs. He concluded by noting that he had taken two of those fragments to the local cultural association, the Association pour la sauvegarde de lâîle de Djerba (ASSIDJ), where they now hang in a frame on the wallâjust as they appear in the photo above.14 The most curious detail of the story, however, came when he told me how he had been able to narrow the date of the event down to a single week. To do so, he had looked for an article in the local newspaper that announced the restoration project of the al-BÄsÄ« mosque. The only problem was that the week of the newspaper issue was 4â14 July 2005âover two and a half decades after the events in Gafsa and more than three and a half decades since Djaabiri claimed to have seen the remains of the same burnt library.15
Presented with astonishingly different stories, the most logical next step was for me to approach the family for confirmation of the details. This seemed especially important since both the son and the father are still alive. SaÊ¿Ä«d al-BÄrÅ«nÄ« contacted the latter, who told him that he did not wish to discuss painful memories and would only confirm that the library had been destroyed.
While the desire to keep family history private was completely understandable and something I wished to respect, the unfortunate result of the familyâs decision not to confirm or deny the dates or details of the libraryâs destruction was the generation of additional rumours. An especially prominent story I began to hear was that perhaps the family was hiding the manuscripts and that the fire had never occurred. The wild variation in the purported dates of the events did not help dissuade people sceptical of the libraryâs destruction. This included an additional member of the family, who spoke to another colleague of mine and expressed doubt by emphasizing that he had never seen the burned bookshelf or any other evidence that the fire had taken place.16 Indeed, even my colleague expressed doubts when he asked me rhetorically:
Figure 8.5
This little booklet was released in April 1987 as a result of an island-wide survey of private manuscript and book collections in Jerba. The third item from the bottom appears as âMaktabat al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«râ (The BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« Library) and the contents represent the most detailed description of the libraryâs content prior to its destruction sometime around the date of the bookletâs publication
Photograph by author, 2015
Am I supposed to believe that the entire collection just went up in flames? If soâshow me. Where was the library? Where are the charred remains of the books? Nothing remains? You want me to believe that?
Without confirmation from the family, I was left with virtually no details about the fire that I could be certain about. This did not, however, mean that no evidence survived for the existence of the library other than a couple of charred remains on the wall of the local cultural association.
The final chapter to this story comes from one of the most important pieces of evidence for the history of the al-BaÊ¿á¹urÄ« collection: an inventory of the collectionâs contents in the typewritten booklet pictured here, which is held in the same Association pour la sauveguarde de lâîle de Djerba (ASSIDJ).17
Alongside manuscript notes in different libraries that were owned by the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« family, this document offers material evidence for the libraryâs history. Unfortunately, it adds an additional layer of complication to the account of the libraryâs destruction in the early 1980s. The ASSIDJ carried out a survey of manuscript libraries on the island, including the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« collection (third from the bottom on the cover page here). The survey resulted in this document, dated April 1987âseven years after the events in Gafsa and two years after Djaabiriâs visit to the burned library.
In an interview in July 2017 with the former president of the ASSIDJ, Farid El Cadi, I listened to his account of the visit to the library.18 He described it as being in complete disorder, which concurs with another account of a visit to the library published by the Libyan historian Amr Khalifa Ennami in 1970.19 In both cases, however, the accounts describe a library very much unburnt.
1 Rumours, Manuscripts, and History
In Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa, Luise White writes that people who relate stories of vampirism in early twentieth-century East Africa
do not speak the truth, with a concept of the accurate description of what they saw, to say what they mean they construct and repeat stories that carry the values and meanings that most forcibly get their points across.20
In a similar manner, the rumours and accounts surrounding the history of the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« library and its destruction in the second half of the twentieth century need not be true to convey meanings. In the examples above, those who related stories to me of their own understanding of the libraryâs history offered contradictory accounts in terms of chronology and other details. Even so, people did not necessarily lie intentionally, and the contradictions do not translate to the conclusion that all the information they related was false. Instead, elements of these accounts sought to communicate ideas, concepts, and information surrounding the culture and meaning of manuscripts in Jerban society from the perspective of the storyteller.
In the short and less complete versions of the story I encountered at the beginning of the conservation project in 2017, those who related the story did so with full admission that they did not know the details but that the account of the destruction of the library by fire was well-known. The details offeredâthat a cigarette started the fire, that the person who did it was insaneâwere not as crucial as the reality that the library was gone. It was simply a regrettable loss of the material cultural heritage of the island. But these tantalizing details led me to investigate further, which in turn led to interviews like the two that I have described above.
In these two interviews, the intervieweesâ recollections carried weight because each claimed to have seen the library shortly after the fire. In addition, however, both of these intervieweesâ accounts carry authority for other reasons. Djaabiri made sure to note at several points that he recalled the events because of their connection with his thesis. His experience of working with manuscripts on the island, his explicit references to the delicacy of issues relating to manuscripts in Jerba, and his position as a professor of history and prominent member of the Ibadi community all lend credibility to his account.
El Barouni, as the owner of the largest and by far the best-known library on the island, has now assumed an importance place as a guardian of manuscripts. Moreover, like Djaabiri, his account emphasizes his connections to the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« family. He was able to drive over to their house during the events themselves and to call them to request an interview for me. His account also highlights his role in preserving the last material traces of the library, in that he carried the charred folios to the local cultural association.
A final and important factor in these accounts also deserves consideration. These conversations took place in a setting where our project team had created a space for discussing the importance of manuscripts. By valorising and seeking out stories about manuscripts, both formal interviews and our project teamâs informal conversations with people in Jerba no doubt contributed to the creation of additional versions of the story of the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« collection. During the course of the project, we aimed to foster a sense of the importance of manuscripts in Jerba in order to garner the support of the local population for the preservation of manuscript libraries. In doing so, however, we also likely played a part in encouraging the production of new versions of their histories.
What emerges from the story related in this essay is the way the al-BaÊ¿á¹urÄ« library and its history merge the social with the codicological and the philological with the fantastical. This essay has thus offered an example of that âtension inherent in the encounter between what people do with texts ⦠and how the social informs the philological and vice versa,â which Olly Akkerman has termed âsocial codicology.â21 The al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« libraryâperhaps especially because of its destruction and fragmentationâexemplifies how âmanuscripts are commodities that are subject to consumption ⦠agency, veneration, looting, travel, exchange, demise, termites, [and] human violenceâ and that âhave multiple modi videndi that we need to engage with, decipher, observe, deconstruct, read, and ⦠participate in if we want to understand how texts work and why these social lives matter.â22 For the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« library, what becomes clear is that the social lives of these manuscripts merit as much attention as the objects themselves (especially since most of them no longer exist).23 Our teamâs possible role in the circulation of rumours about the collectionâs history is also an important example of why social codicologists must be attentive to âquestions of positionality, reflexivity, ethics, and gender.â24
Evidence of the existence of the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« library, some indications of its content, and pieces of the story of its destruction remain. Alongside these historical traces, however, there is a rich body of social history, of stories and rumours surrounding it and other libraries on Jerba. Just as the manuscripts themselves reveal much about the islandâs past, these contradictory accounts and unverifiable histories communicate the perspectives of Jerbans themselves on why manuscripts are worth telling stories about.
Funding for the pilot project âConserving Endangered Archives in Jerba: the al-Basi Family Library Projectâ (2017â2018) that led to this chapter was provided by the Endangered Archives Programme, administered by the British Library and funded by the Arcadia Foundation, a charitable fund of Lisbet Rausing and Peter Baldwin. I would like to thank the organizers of the Social Codicology workshop in Rabat for the opportunity to contribute to the volume. I would like also to thank Werner Schwartz for sharing the photocopy of the manuscript of the KitÄb Ibn SallÄm below, as well as colleagues at the Al Akhawayn University Faculty Brown Bag series for their feedback on the project. An earlier version of this piece was shared with the undergraduate students enrolled in the Al Akhawayn University Honours Seminar in Spring 2018. I would like to thank them for their critiques, suggestions, and other helpful feedback. Additional and sincere thanks to Said El Barouni, Farhat Djaabiri, Farid El Cadi, and the other interviewees referenced here anonymously for their willingness to share stories about the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« library with me during fieldwork in Jerba and Tunis in 2017â2018. Finally, I thank the volumeâs editor, Olly Akkerman, and the anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and comments. Those I was able to incorporate no doubt strengthened my contribution to the volume. All shortcomings or errors are mine alone.
Luise White, Speaking with Vampires: Rumor and History in Colonial Africa (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000). The present chapter represents a case study of a more complete methodological engagement with Whiteâs work and the study of unverifiable or untrue accounts of the past, provided in Paul M. Love Jr., âManuscripts Are like Vampires: Libraries and Their Uncertain Histories on the Island of Jerba, Tunisia,â History Compass, September 2020,
SÄlim Bin YaÊ¿qÅ«b, TÄrÄ«kh jazÄ«rat Jarba wa-madÄrisihÄ al-Ê¿ilmiyya, ed. Farhat Djaabiri, 2nd ed. (Tunis: Cérès Editions, 2006), 155â156. Vermondo Brugnatelli has explained the transformation of the name based on phonetic grounds: âNowadays, the family name has slightly changed, from BaÄ¡á¹Å«rÄ« to BaËá¹Å«r(Ä«), as a consequence of a phonetic shift that also affects some other words in Jerbi, e.g. lÉeá¹nuq âcrane (bird)â vs. Tunisian Arabic É£arnug. This phenomenon is quite frequent in the Berber language of Ghadames (Libya) and takes place only sporadically in Jerba.â The quotation comes from a forthcoming article tentatively titled âSamples of IbÄá¸Ä« Manuscripts Described by Ennami in James Bynonâs Legacyâ (to be published in articles adapted from interventions at a workshop entitled âIbadi Manuscripts in European Collections,â held in Paris from 17â18 June 2022).
My edited and annotated list of the books held in the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« library appears in Paul M. Love, Jr., âA Library in Fragments: An Inventory of the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« Family and Library in Djerba, Tunisiaâ in Steven Judd and Robert Haug (eds.), Islam on the Margins: Studies in Memory of Michael Bonner (Leiden: Brill, 2023): 321â340.
On this book and what is known of Ibn SallÄmâs biography, see Muḥammad á¹¢Äliḥ NÄá¹£ir BÄbÄÊ¿ammÄ«, ed., MuÊ¿jam aÊ¿lÄm al-ibÄá¸iyya (Dictionnaire des hommes illustres de lâIbadisme, les hommes du Maghreb), vol. 2 (Beirut: DÄr al-Gharb al-IslÄmÄ«, 2000), 350. While a couple other copies have since been found in Libya, the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« manuscript is the oldest known copy.
Ibn SallÄm al-IbÄá¸Ä«, KitÄb fÄ«hi badâ al-islÄm wa-sharÄʾiÊ¿ al-dÄ«n, ed. Werner Schwartz and SÄlim b. YaÊ¿qÅ«b (Beirut: DÄr al-á¹£Äá¸ir, 1986).
On this work attributed to MaqrÄ«n b. Muḥammad al-Bughá¹Å«rÄ« (d. sixth/twelfth century), see Martin H. Custers, Al-IbÄá¸iyya: A Bibliography (Vol. 2: IbÄá¸Ä«s of the Maghrib), 2nd edition, vol. 2 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms Verlag, 2016), 134â135. A published edition of the work, based on a manuscript in the hand of Shaykh SÄlimâs son MaḥmÅ«d b. SÄlim b. YaÊ¿qÅ«b, was published online as: MuqrÄ«n b. Muḥammad al-Bughá¹Å«rÄ«, Siyar mashÄyikh nafÅ«sa, ed. TawfÄ«q Ê¿IyÄd al-ShuqrÅ«nÄ« (Tawalt, 2009).
Ali Boujdidi and Paul M. Love, Jr., âPreserving Endangered Archives in Jerba, Tunisia: The al-Basi Family Manuscript Library,â Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies 3, no. 1 (2018): 215â219. On the project results and for full digital facsimiles of the entire collection, see âConserving Endangered Family Manuscript Libraries on the Island of Jerba, Tunisia (EAP993)â:
For details and methodological approaches to these stories, see Love, âManuscripts Are like Vampires.â
Kenneth J. Perkins, A History of Modern Tunisia, 2nd ed. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2014), 169.
Perkins, History of Modern Tunisia, 170.
Shortly before submitting the final version of this essay, I learned from my colleague Ê¿Ali Boujdidi that the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« family still possess a handful of burned fragments and three statements of loan for manuscripts borrowed in the 1970s. The contents of those statements with the full inventory of the al-BaÊ¿á¹Å«rÄ« collection can be found in Love, âA Library in Fragments.â
Personal interview with Farhat Djaabiri by author, August 18, 2018 at Association Djerba Ettawasol (Tunis, Tunisia).
Personal interview with SaÊ¿Ä«d al-BÄrÅ«nÄ« by author, August 14, 2018, at El Barounia Library (Houmet Souk, Jerba, Tunisia).
âNashÄá¹ al-jamÊ¿iyya,â Al-JazÄ«ra Newspaper, July 2005.
A high-profile version of a comparable phenomenon was the alleged destruction of manuscripts in Timbuktu in 2012. In a widely publicized response, head of the Timbuktu Manuscripts Project Shamil Jeppie had to offer a corrective to this rumour, which had circulated internationally. Shamil Jeppie, âAn Update from the Timbuktu Manuscripts Project,â published on Jadaliyya Reports (31Â January 2013),
QÄʾimat al-kutub al-mawjÅ«da fÄ« l-maktabÄt al-khÄṣṣa wa-l-Ê¿Ämma (HÅ«mat al-sÅ«q: JamÊ¿iyyat á¹£iyÄnat jazÄ«rat Jarba, 1987).
Personal interview by author, July 27, 2017, with Farid El Cadi at his home in Houmet Souk, Jerba.
Amr Khalifah Ennami, âA Description of New Ibadi Manuscripts from North Africa,â Journal of Semitic Studies 15, no. 1 (1970): 64.
White, Speaking with Vampires, 73.
Olly Akkerman, âThe Bohra Manuscript Treasury as a Sacred Site of Philology: A Study in Social Codicology,â Philological Encounters 4 (2019): 199.
Akkerman, âBohra Manuscript Treasury,â 199.
For an example of combining this social history with material history, see Paul M. Love, Jr., âProvenance in the Aggregate: The Social Life of an Arabic Manuscript Collection in Naples,â Manuscript Studies: A Journal of the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies 3:2 (2018): 334â356.
Akkerman, âBohra Manuscript Treasury,â 198.
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