Manuscript Treasures from Najaf in Carl Brockelmann’s Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur

In the 1890s, Carl Brockelmann (d. 1956) embarked on a mission to compile single-handedly a bibliography of the entire extant Muslim literary tradition in the Arabic language. Though the task proved impossible to accomplish in full, the supplement volumes (published in 1937, 1938, and 1942) and the second edition (published in 1943 and 1949) that eventually replaced the original Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur (GAL) remain an indispensable tool for Arabists and Islamicists today, especially for the mid-fifth/eleventh century and later. Little is known about how Brockelmann went about his work in the decades between the publication of the original GAL and the late 1930s and 1940s, when he was preparing the supplements and the second edition. Access to the relevant primary and secondary material proved challenging and variable over the course of Brockelmann’s career. The difficulties he encountered in consulting the relevant materials were partly alleviated by the support he received from colleagues, especially Hellmut Ritter (d. 1971), who was based in Istanbul and had access to the rich manuscript holdings of the local libraries. However, the importance of Ritter’s contributions to Brockelmann’s work goes beyond these manuscripts. For example, Ritter provided Brockelmann with two documents concerning the manuscript treasures of Najaf: a letter he had received in March 1936 from a young scholar in Najaf, ʿ⁠Alī al-Khāqānī (d. 1400/1979 or 1980), in which the latter described a selection of locally held manuscripts, and a handwritten catalogue by one Najafābādī. Eventually Brockelmann also had access to the first two volumes of Āghā Buzurg al-Ṭihrānī’s (d. 1389/1970) al-Dharīʿ⁠a ilā taṣānīf al-Shīʿ⁠a, his third important source for the manuscripts of Najaf. The present study analyses Brockelmann’s usage of these three sources.