Oriental Cultures and Scholarship in the Baltic Region - (Hardcover)

About the Book

This volume explores scholarly and cultural engagement with the Orient in the Baltic Sea region (1500-1800), highlighting knowledge exchange, practices, and sources across institutions and regions through interdisciplinary perspectives and transregional networks.

Book Synopsis

This volume uncovers the rich, yet little-known history of scholarly and cultural engagement with the Orient in the Baltic Sea region from 1500 to 1800. Spanning disciplines from theology and philology to diplomacy and material culture, the chapters trace how Islamic, Jewish, and Asian knowledge circulated through universities, libraries, and diplomatic missions. Contributors explore how Northern European scholars, clerics, and collectors engaged with Oriental texts, languages, and artefacts and how they shaped and were shaped by local traditions of knowledge. The book brings to light a vibrant network of exchange that connected the Mare Balticum with the wider early modern world.

About the Author

Cornelia Linde, PhD, is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Greifswald. She is the author of How to Correct the 'Sacra Scriptura'? Textual Criticism of the Latin Bible between the Twelfth and the Fifteenth Century (Oxford, 2012) and the editor of Nicolaus Maniacoria, Suffraganeus bibliothece (Turnhout, 2013).

Jan Loop, Dr. phil., is Professor of Early Modern History and Religious Cultures at the University of Copenhagen. He is the author of Johann Heinrich Hottinger (1620-1667). Arabic and Islamic Studies in the 17th Century (Oxford, 2013) and co-editor of The European Qur'an. Encounters with the Holy Text of Islam from the Ninth to the Twentieth Century (Berlin, 2024).

Bernd Roling, Dr, phil., is Professor for Classical and Medieval Latin at the Freie Universität Berlin. His monographs include Physica Sacra. Wunder, Naturwissenschaft und historischer Schriftsinn zwischen Mittelalter und Früher Neuzeit (Leiden, 2013), Odins Imperium. Der Rudbeckianismus als Paradigma an den skandinavischen Universitäten (1680-1860) (Leiden, 2020), and together with Julia Weitbrecht, Das Einhorn. Geschichte einer Faszination (München, 2023).