The MELA Book Award Committee (BAC) is charged by the MELA Executive Board (EB) to choose one or more outstanding work(s) related to Middle East studies librarianship, the history of Middle East libraries/scholarship, or other topics congruent with the mission of MELA. The Committee has considered publications from the last three copyright years (2018-2021). The Committee received eighteen nominations of books published in North America, Europe, and the Middle East.
The MELA Book Award Committee has decided to award the first MELA Book Award to two publications:
Saʻīd al-Jūmānī’s Maktabah madrasīyah fī Ḥalab nihāyat al-ʻahd al-ʻUthmānī: al-Daftar al-mujaddad li-kutub waqf ʻUthmān Bāshā al-Dūrikī = مكتبة مدرسية في حلب نهاية العهد العثماني : الدفتر المجدد لكتب وقف عثمان باشا الدوركي (Beirut: OIB, 2019) is a remarkable study of the manuscripts endowed to the library of the madrasa of ‘Uthmān Pasha in Aleppo in the eighteenth century. The book makes an invaluable contribution to the study of the history of manuscripts and libraries in Greater Syria, the Ottoman Empire, and the Middle East.
Bülent Özükan’s Tarihte İstanbul Haritaları (Istanbul: Boyut Yayin Grubu, 2020) is a bilingual (Turkish-English) collection of historical maps of Istanbul (mostly from the fourteenth through the nineteenth centuries). The study covers works by major Ottoman and European cartographers, mainly English, French, German and Russian as well as Italian, Greek, Armenian, Hungarian and Swedish. Each map is thoroughly annotated. Also included are surveys about the cartographers, their nations and latter’s relations with the Ottomans. The maps were collected from more than fifty national, university, and municipal libraries as well as museums and private collections, following which thorough research, writing, and setting were conducted. This is a magnificent publication, rich in visual and scholarly content, of interest to historians, cartographers, urban studies specialists and ethnographers as well as lovers of maps and books in general.
In addition to the winners, the Committee decided to make three honorary mentions:
Treasures of Knowledge: An Inventory of the Ottoman Palace Library (1502/3-1503/4) (Gülru Necipoğlu, Cemal Kafadar, and Cornell H. Fleischer, eds.; Leiden: Brill, 2019) is a detailed study of the palace library of the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II. Treasures of Knowledge makes an indispensable contribution to the study of the history of libraries and manuscripts in the Ottoman and the early modern Islamic world.
Nourane Ben Azzouna’s Aux origines de classicisme: calligraphes et bibliophiles au temps des dynasties mongoles (les Ilkhanides et les Djalayirides, 656-814/1258-1411) (Leiden: Brill, 2018) is a meticulous study of book production and calligraphy in the Ilkhanid and Jalayirid period. In addition, Aux origines de classicisme is the most detailed study to date of the key figures in the Islamic calligraphic tradition.
Konrad Hirschler’s Monument to Medieval Syrian Book Culture: The Library of Ibn ʻAbd al-Hādī (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2019) is a detailed study of a late medieval Damascene library. The study breaks new methodological and conceptual grounds in the study of Middle Eastern manuscript libraries from the Medieval period to the present. The book is available via open access from Edinburgh University Press.
MELA Book Award Committee 2021:
- Guy Burak (New York University)
- Ed Jajko (Hoover Institution, retired)
- Evyn Kropf (University of Michigan)
- Rachel Simon (Princeton University)
- Rustin Zarkar (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill)