C. R. Dadichi (1693/4–1734) and Oriental manuscript collections in 18th ct. Germany. By S. Mills
Channel: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin
Date: 2022-08-15

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed a huge influx of ‘Oriental’ manuscripts into European collections. But with these gains came difficulties: how to organise, catalogue, and interpret such a wealth of unfamiliar material? One answer was to set to work native speakers of Arabic and other Eastern languages in cataloguing European collections. Eastern Christians in particular, it has been argued recently, played a key if hitherto underacknowledged role as curators of an ‘archive’ of early modern Orientalism. In this paper, I shall examine the place of Arabic-speaking Christians as interpreters of European collections through the case study of figure not unknown to German scholarship: Carolus Rali Dadichi (1693/4–1734). Reconstructing Dadichi’s travels through the Holy Roman Empire in the 1710s, I shall explore his work creating, cataloguing, and translating Arabic manuscripts in Frankfurt, Gotha, Halle, and Leipzig, and his collaboration with the bibliophile Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach (1683–1734) and the Pietist theologian and orientalist Johann Heinrich Callenberg (1694–1760). The paper trail Dadichi left enables us to catch sight of the ways by which European understanding of Oriental collections in the eighteenth century was mediated by native Arabic speakers. 

Dr Simon Mills is Lecturer in Early Modern History, Newcastle University.