Abstract
With the launch of the Qalamos portal, the descriptions of more than 40,000 Islamic manuscripts from around 45 institutions in Germany have been made accessible. Supported by the systematic integration of accession data, manuscript annotations and seal impressions as well as the improvement of data quality for geographical entities, a wide range of connections with regard to the history of single objects as well as complete collections become visible.
Since 1828, the year in which the continuous recording of acquisitions began, more than 700 people have been involved in the acquisition of so-called Oriental manuscripts at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin and its predecessor institutions as agents, sellers or donors. Focusing on the Islamic manuscripts held at this institution, my talk uses selected examples to take a special look at the accession data, in order to illustrate the perspectives that open up here in terms of better understanding collection development over a longer period.
Analysing provenance data initially provides a much broader view on the history and reception of individual manuscripts, and supports the reconstruction of historical collections. However, the comprehensive processing of provenance and acquisition information enables further conclusions to be drawn about the dynamics of the collection’s development in academic, political and economic contexts.
