Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts in the Hellmut Ritter Microfilm Collection of the Uppsala University Library, vol. 30.

• Author: Conrad, Lawrence I.

Of the various German scholars who were able to explore the riches of Istanbul's Islamic manuscript collections in the early decades of this century, Hellmut Ritter was undoubtedly the most productive. More than a score of articles published between 1928 and 1953 were required to report his findings, and over the years he assembled a collection of more than 600 microfilms of important texts. In 1951 this microfilm collection was acquired by the University Library of Uppsala, where a card index was prepared by Bernhard Lewin. This was subsequently made available to Oscar Lofgren to serve as a basis for a catalogue, but this project was not completed by Lofgren himself. Prior to publication, his manuscript was thoroughly checked, revised, and provided with indices by Mikael Persenius, a research assistant in the Department of Semitic Languages.

Ritter's collection covers over 1200 titles. Most are from libraries in Istanbul, with texts from Aya Sofya being especially dominant. There are also copies of MSS from collections in Ankara (12), Bursa (7), Kaiseri (2), Manisa (2), and Konya (1), one from the Dar al-Kutub in Cairo, and incidental items (18) from libraries in Europe and North America. There are many texts on Sufi topics, including works by numerous lesser known authors. Poetry is also well represented, and covers authors from pre-Islamic times to the ninth/fourteenth century. Works in Graeco-Arabica are similarly prominent, and include texts in medicine, philosophy, mathematics, and the natural sciences. There are also many essays by renowned litterateurs, philological works, and a number of important books in history and geography.

Opening the catalogue at random will suffice to confirm the importance of this collection, which, given its origins, one expects in any case. The preface by Tryggve Kronholm alerts the reader to some of the unique MSS and autographs (some of the examples he cites, however, are only partial or fragmentary), and to this it must be added that Ritter obviously selected numerous MSS for their antiquity. Dated fourth-century MSS of books...