Tuesday, 15th of December, 6 - 8 p.m.

While the Cairo Geniza of medieval documents is well known, this was not the only depository for 'sacred trash' in the Egyptian and Syrian lands. A wide variety of social groups deposited their documents in the Damascus Dome of the Treasury. This talk will present an attempt to reconstitute documents (marriage contracts, bequest-related legal disputes, private letters) from this depository which were recycled in late Mamluk manuscripts. 

Konrad Hirschler is Professor of Middle Eastern History at SOAS, University of London. He is the author of Medieval Damascus: Plurality and Diversity in an Arabic Library – The Ashrafīya Library Catalogue (forthcoming 2016), The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands (2013) and Medieval Arabic Historiography: Authors as Actors (2006) as well as co-editor of Manuscript Notes as Documentary Sources (2011).

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