Crusaders and Books: What Happened to the Legendary Banu Ammar Library of Tripoli?

Join us for the second Bayard Dodge Distinguished Visiting Professorship lecture featuring Professor Konrad Hirschler, Professor of Middle Eastern History at the University of Hamburg and member of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures. In this talk, Professor Hirschler explores the fate of one of the most renowned medieval libraries in the Islamic world—the Banu Ammar Library of Tripoli—following the Crusader conquest. Drawing on manuscript evidence and historical accounts, the lecture sheds light on the cultural losses and transformations that accompanied the Crusades in the Eastern Mediterranean.