Owning Books and Preserving Documents in Medieval Jerusalem

Said Aljoumani is Research Associate at Universität Hamburg (Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures) and holds a PhD in Library Studies from Cairo University. He is the author of numerous journal articles as well as books in Arabic such as The Oeuvre of Ibn Abd al-Hadi and his Contribution to Preserving Intellectual Heritage (Brill, 2021), The Library of a Madrasa in Aleppo at the End of the Ottoman Era (German Orient Institute Beirut, 2020; awarded the 2021 Book Price of the Middle East Librarians Association) and Syrian Libraries in the Zangid and Ayyubid Era (Damascus: Dar Nur Hawran, 2014).
Konrad Hirschler is Professor of Middle Eastern History at Universität Hamburg (Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures) and previously held professorships of Middle Eastern History at SOAS (University of London) and Freie Universität Berlin. He is amongst others author of award-winning books such as A Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture - The Library of Ibn ʿAbd al-Hādī (EUP, 2020), Medieval Damascus: Plurality and Diversity in an Arabic Library (EUP, 2016), The Written Word in the Medieval Arabic Lands: A Social and Cultural History of Reading Practices (EUP, 2012) and Medieval Arabic Historiography: Authors as Actors (Routledge, 2006).