The Arabic collection at Uppsala University Library at present consists of about 15,000 printed items most of which were published during the 20th century. They are mainly books from the humanities, Islamic theology and law. The history of medicine is particularly well represented in the group dealing with the history of science.
The oldest works, those published before 1800, number around 100 volumes. These include European works printed in the 16th and 17th centuries which were acquired by the well known Swedish travellers and book collectors Johan Gabriel Sparwenfeld and Jacob Jonas Björnståhl.
Among the most interesting books from the 18th century are those printed at the Monastery of St. John, in Dayr al-Shuwayr in Lebanon, that were bought by Adolph Fredric Sturtzenbecker, the priest of the Swedish Legation in Constantinople, on his travels in the Middle East.
The collection of works from the 19th (approx. 1,000) and early 20th centuries was enriched above all in 1899 by a sumptuous gift of books to King Oscar II on the occasion of the 8th International Congress of Orientalists held in Stockholm in 1889 and with the bequest of the library belonging to the famous orientalist Carlo Landberg in the 1920s. The Library has been acquiring Arabic publications regularly since the 1920s.
The entire collection, both the modern and the older parts, can be found in the national catalogue LIBRIS and in the Uppsala University Library Catalogue.
The transcription system used for cataloguing is that of the Library of Congress.
Further reading
Bernhard Lewin, "Uppsala universitetsbiblioteks samling av arabiska 1500- och 1600-talstryck". In Donum Grapeanum: festskrift tillägnad Anders Grape på sextiofemårsdagen den 7 mars 1945. - Uppsala, 1945. - P. 577-604. [In Swedish only]
