John Macgregor Murrays Bibliothek und die persischen Handschriften der SBB. By Y. Dehghani Farsani
Channel: Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin
Date: 14/08/2022

The collection of the Persian manuscripts of the State Library of Berlin developed over more than three and half centuries. A large number of manuscripts from this collection were acquired by (mostly German) orientalists, diplomats, envoys and traveling merchants in the Middle East, which then ended up in what was then the Royal Library. Beyond that, this collection grew through the (direct or indirect) acquisition of the private libraries of some of non-German European scholars, envoys and travelers in the Middle East and beyond, too. Noteworthy in this context is the purchase of part of the private library of the Scottish officer John Macgregor Murray (1745-1822) after his death in 1829. Murray was active in Bengal in the service of the British East India Company from 1770 to 1797, where he—most probably due to his personal interests—zealously commissioned the copy or the translation of many oriental (Arabic and Persian) and Indian (Sanskrit and Hindi) works, or bought copies of them. From the catalogue of his library, which was compiled in 1796 in Bengal, we can learn that the manuscripts of Persian works constituted a lion share of his library.
This paper aims to provide an account on the various genres, which Murray’s acquired Persian manuscripts in Bengal represent, and by comparing his collection with Sprenger’s collection, to study what this collection tells us about his interest in the circulating knowledge in Bengal. Moreover, it explores how the acquired manuscripts from Murray’s library mark the collection of Persian manuscripts of the State Library of Berlin.

Dr. Yoones Dehghani Farsani is a research assistant in the DFG funded project "Orient-Digital" at the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin.