1. Over the last few days, I have started preparing a presentation on the Maronite scholar Andrea Scandar of Cyprus (Indrāwus Skandar al-Qubrusī, d. 1748)1 for an upcoming conference in Munich organised by my colleague Dr Vevian Zaki and entitled ‘Once We Were Here: Traces of Mobility across the Ottoman Empire‘ (8-10 July 2025). Scandar… Continue reading Andrea Scandar’s Manuscripts in the Vatican Library
Category: Travelers
New Materials on Grote (Part 4)
1. This is the fourth post in a series in which I document new biographical material related to the collector Friedrich Grote (you can find the first three posts here, here, and here). Already for the second time I was unexpectedly approached by someone because they came across a source on Grote by coincidence. This… Continue reading New Materials on Grote (Part 4)
New Materials on Grote (Part 3)
1. This is the third post in a series in which I document new biographical material related to the collector Friedrich Grote (you can find the first two posts here and here). This post is about two letters by Grote that Vincent Engelhardt (Leiden University) found in the Central Archive of the Berlin State Museums… Continue reading New Materials on Grote (Part 3)
New Materials on Grote (Part 2)
1. In July, I published a long article on the biography of the collector of Sinaitic manuscripts Friedrich Grote (1861-1922).1 Grote can be described as one of the most underestimated manuscript collectors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He played a central role in the dispersion of the handwritten cultural heritage of St… Continue reading New Materials on Grote (Part 2)
“Simonides Is Still Alive!”: An Interview with Author Rüdiger Schaper about His Biography of a Manuscript Forger
1. Hunting for rare books, collecting mania, true forgeries, falsified history, fictional elements in biographical writing – these are just some of the topics I talked about with author Rüdiger Schaper. He has dedicated a biography to the famous forger Constantine Simonides.1 After the publication of Codex Sinaiticus by Tischendorf, Simonides went public with the… Continue reading “Simonides Is Still Alive!”: An Interview with Author Rüdiger Schaper about His Biography of a Manuscript Forger
New Materials on Grote (Part 1)
1. Recently, I came across an online auction that was held almost a year ago to sell three curious photographs and a court document. The Amsterdam auction house Zwiggelaar offered the material as lot 1492 on 6 December 2022. The description states, among other things: “Depicts Grote, notorious collector of Christian Oriental manuscripts” (fig. 1).… Continue reading New Materials on Grote (Part 1)