By Celeste Gianni
Hazine recognizes that most archives and libraries are closed right now and emphasize prioritizing during these times the health and safety of all those who work at archives and libraries as well as the health and safety of those who use archives and libraries. We are publishing archive reviews in the hopes that eventually these repositories will be accessible again.
This February 2020, I spent three weeks in Rome carrying out research for the project Stories of Survival: Recovering the Connected Histories of Eastern Christianity in the Early Modern World (Faculty of History, University of Oxford).
I spent most of the time at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana (commonly known also as Vatican Library) looking at Arabic manuscripts related to the Eastern Christian communities active between 1500 to 1750, focusing on authorship, but also scribal practices, as well as ownership, reading and transmitting information as attested by the marginalia, colophons and other documentary notes that are commonly found in Arabic manuscripts.
Personally, I looked specifically at one collection that is held at the Vatican library, namely the collection of Arabic and Syriac manuscripts of the Catholic Syrian priest Paul Sbath (Aleppo, 1887, – Aleppo, 20 October 1946) that he sold to the Vatican in 1927. I both looked at the manuscripts and accessed the archive material related to the acquisition history of this collection.
Unfortunately, the restrictions regarding taking photographs inside the Vatican Library mean that I do not have any image of manuscripts nor interiors of the library to add to this post. Nevertheless, I think this aspect also adds to the uniqueness of this experience, that I will treasure forever in my private memories.
