Congratulations to one of our 2023 grantees!
We are thrilled to fund Laura Hinrichsen for her publication. So what is it?
About the project:
In her upcoming book, provisionally titled The Lost Libraries of Tunis and published by De Gruyter, Hinrichsen explores the medieval libraries of Tunis, long accepted to have been lost in the disastrous 1535 sacking of Tunis. Numerous Arabic manuscripts, rich with priceless knowledge, were looted during the sacking and brought to Europe, where they were sold or donated to scholars and institutions in Italy, France, and the Habsburg Empire. Hinrichsen painstakingly hunts down and assembles the scattered holdings of the fallen libraries, and her book reconstructs for the first time the original holdings of Tunis’ medieval libraries, showing what can still be learned from recovered fragments. The book brings together around 200 manuscripts from over 30 library collections worldwide – it retrieves from oblivion an important piece of North African manuscript culture, and rescues a seemingly irretrievable treasure of knowledge.
About the grantee:
Laura Hinrichsen recently completed her doctorate at the University of Oxford, UK, before moving back to Germany for several roles in curatorship and research.
