Chapter 7 Johann Gottfried Wetzstein’s Manuscripts Containing Arabic Popular Stories
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Abstract
Johann Gottfried Wetzstein (1815–1905) brought together several collections of manuscripts while working as the Prussian consul in Damascus (1848–1862). Collecting manuscripts was just one of his numerous activities. Among the Arabic volumes that he gathered, and that are now in the Staatsbibliothek in Berlin, are many manuscripts containing popular stories. In the eighth volume of his catalogue of the Berlin collection (1896), Wilhelm Ahlwardt describes all the stories belonging to the Wetzstein and other collections. This is a rich source for Arabic popular storytelling, but it has been engaged with only infrequently during the long century after the publication of Ahlwardt’s fundamental work. The present essay explores some of Wetzstein’s manuscript storytelling texts and proposes ideas for a formal typology.