The Oriental Outpost of the Republic of Letters. Sebastian Tengnagel, the Imperial Library in Vienna, and Knowledge of the Orient in Early Modern Europe

This book follows the life of Sebastian Tengnagel, the imperial librarian who built Vienna’s first major collection of Arabic, Turkish, Persian, and Hebrew manuscripts. Through his correspondence and exchanges with European scholars and Ottoman subjects, it examines the intellectual networks that shaped his work and the circulation of knowledge across empires. By exploring his collection alongside his political and religious affiliations, the book offers fresh perspectives on seventeenth-century Vienna as a hub for the acquisition and transmission of Oriental scholarship.