Francisco del Río catalogs for the first time the Arabic manuscripts in the Maronite Library of Aleppo

The Maronite Library of Aleppo has more than 1.600 manuscripts, most of them coming from donations made by members of the Christian community over the centuries. The collection includes works on the Bible, and on theology, philosophy, history, grammar, literature, sciences and many other themes. The collection of the Library has been known for years by western researchers, but it had never been catalogued. This last work in a series of three inventories solves the situation. The first volume (2008) presented a detailed record and description of the Syriac manuscripts, and the second one (2011) did the same with those in Karshuni. Following the model established by those two previous publications, this book -edited entirely in English- presents the Arabic manuscripts of the collection. Del Río offers a short and clear description of each copy, including the title or titles, names of the author and copyist, place and date of the copy, and any formal feature that can be useful for the right identification of the manuscript. There are also fifty images and three indeces of titles, anthroponyms and place names.

The presence of Maronites in Aleppo probably dates back to the Middle Ages but we cannot speak of a fully organized community in this city before the 16th century, when the people living in the mountains of Lebanon went through difficulties during the last years of the Mameluke government caused a massive migration to the north of Syria. The Maronite community did not have an own archbishop until mid 17th century, which seems to be the origins of the creation of a library, with a collection of codex and manuscripts that belonged to the Archbishopric.

This book is part of the collection Barcino Monographica Orientalia, edited by the Interuniversity Institute of Ancient Near Studies  (IPOA) of the Faculty of Philology of the University of Barcelona. So far, the published titles are: Diversidad de formaciones políticas en Mesopotamia y el Cercano Oriente by Cristina di Bennardis, Eleonora Ravenna and Ianir Milevski (ed.); Poderes colectivos en la Siria del Bronce Final by Bárbara E. Solans; La Biblia hebrea en la literatura. Guía temática y bibliográfica by Gregorio del Olmo Lete; Historia del Instituto del Próximo Oriente Antiguo (1971-2012) by Jordi Vidal; Estudios de intertextualidad semítica noroccidental. Hebreo y ugarítico, by Gregorio del Olmo Lete, and La interpretación del antiguo Israel, entre la historia y la política, by Jordi Vidal (ed.).

Francisco del Río Sánchez (Toledo, 1966) is a lecturer of Semitic Languages and member of IPOA. He collaborates in national and international research programs on the connections between languages, cultures and religions in the Near East. He led several projects related to Semitic languages and the archaeology of this area, and published numerous articles and books on this topic, such as: Los “Tratados sobre la quietud” (shelya) de Dadisho Qatraya (Ausa, 2001); Textos epigráficos en arameo palmireno, hatreo y nabateo (Publications and Editions of the University of Barcelona, 2006); Catálogo de los manuscritos siríacos, árabes karshuni y copto-árabes de Montserrat (CSIC- Publicacions de lʼAbadia de Montserrat, 2012), and Nabatu (Publications and Editions of the University of Barcelona, 2015).