Oriental manuscripts

The Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin University Library currently holds 52 Arabic, Persian and Ottoman manuscripts. The stock is based on the reference collection of Julius Ruska (1867-1949), who held a chair for History of Oriental Natural Sciences in Heidelberg.

The majority of the collection consists of manuscripts about mathematics, astronomy and alchemy as well as many reprographies from Turkish and German libraries. They are currently only documented in a printed catalogue.

The original manuscripts are also documented in the qalamos.net portal.

History oft he Collection

The Heidelberg Institute for Natural Sciences, founded by Julius Ruska, was moved to Berlin in 1927. It was later included in the newly founded Institute for Medical History and Sciences. Its director, Paul Diepgen, emphasized on holding a broad and extensive spectrum of topics in its library. The library consisted of about 80.000 units until many were destroyed or lost during World War II. The collection was assigned to the university library in 1973 and moved to the Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm-Zentrum in 2008. The collection has been documented in 1939 in a printed catalogue. Large parts of the manuscript collection are from the estate of Carl Schoys (1877-1925), a scholar of mathematics and astronomy. Other manuscripts were aquired from Cairo via Max Meyerhof.  

Catalogue

Julius Ruska und Willy Hartner: Katalog der orientalischen und lateinischen Originalhandschriften, Abschriften und Photokopien des Instituts für Geschichte der Medizin und Naturwissenschaften in Berlin. Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften und der Medizin. Redigiert von Paul Diepgen und Julius Ruska. Band 7, Heft 2/3. Berlin: Springer 1939.