Rome as a Hub of Arabic Studies in the 17th Century: A View from Vienna

The Orientalist Sebastian Tengnagel, the Catholic imperial librarian in Vienna from 1608 to 1636, saw Rome as the capital of Oriental studies and for years dreamed of going there to refine his knowledge of Arabic. He never succeeded in leaving Vienna, but throughout his life he remained interested in developments of Oriental studies in Rome: he was curious about the activities and libraries of Raimondi, Lomellini, Strachan, Abel and Scialac; he had especially regular contact with the College of Maronites and was always updated on the publications of the Propaganda Fide Printing House. Nonetheless, in letters exchanged with the Jesuit Petrus Lansselius and the traveller Pietro Della Valle, he did not hesitate to criticise Roman censorship and the increasing restriction of Oriental studies. With this mixture of enthusiasm and frustration, the case of Tengnagel in Vienna provides a useful mirror to look at the perception of Arabic studies in Rome from the perspective of northern Europe, bridging the Orientalism of northern European philologists with that of the Catholic missionaries. Tengnagel had 14 Qur’ans and dozens of devotional Turkish books: his collection and his marginal notes, even more than his rather reticent letters, show a keen interest in the Muslim tradition and an attempt to find common ground between the three monotheistic religions. Following the trajectories of these texts and their provenance, we encounter Ottoman soldiers who died on the battlefield, Catholic soldiers plundering libraries in Hungary, cardinals active in peace talks with the Ottoman Empire, bibliophile dragomans, physicians, mystics, rabbis, and Lutheran, Calvinist, and Anglican scholars, in a tangle of violence and knowledge.