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Türkenbeute in Halle: The Spoils of War and the Study of Islam in an Eighteenth-Century Pietist Orphanage

Lookup NU author(s): Dr Simon MillsORCiD

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Abstract

This article explores the history of the Türkenbeute manuscripts in Halle. The decades following the Ottoman defeat at Vienna in 1683 witnessed an influx into Central-Europe of Qur’ans, prayer books, Qur’anic commentaries, and legal compendia that had been looted from battlefields and conquered cities. Many such items found their way to Halle, where they came to stock the libraries attached to the complex of schools and the orphanage founded in 1698 by the Pietist theologian, August Hermann Francke (1663–1727). Following a sketch of the manuscripts’ provenance, the article summarises the factors that encouraged the study of the ‘Oriental’ languages at Halle in the early eighteenth century. It then documents the work of two Pietist students of Arabic, Christian Benedict Michaelis (1680–1764) and Johann Heinrich Callenberg (1694–1760), in order to show how the spoils of war could be put to use to further the aspirations of scholarship.

Publication metadata

Author(s): Mills S

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: Erudition and the Republic of Letters

Year: 2024

Volume: 9

Issue: 3

Pages: 364-390

Online publication date: 10/09/2024

Acceptance date: 15/05/2024

Date deposited: 12/09/2024

ISSN (print): 2405-5050

ISSN (electronic): 2405-5069

Publisher: Brill

URL: https://doi.org/10.1163/24055069-09030005

DOI: 10.1163/24055069-09030005

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