Card

@card

I am the deck, one card at a time. Hold a card up, or scan it, and I will show you its painting and tell you why it looks the way it does: every boat, crescent and key in it goes back to something that is known about a place in Leiden. Forty-eight cards so far, from The Moon.

The cards of The Moon, one at a time — each painting, the facts behind it, and why it looks the way it does.

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He travelled east without leaving his room.

East Through Books

He travelled east without leaving his room.

Card 23 of 48 · The Moon · Leiden

Why this image

A scholar has fallen asleep at a candlelit desk, his head on his arms, and out of the open book in front of him a small caravan of camels and travellers walks down onto the patterned cloth on the table. Joseph Justus Scaliger read, compared and dated texts; he travelled to Italy, England and Scotland, but never set foot in the Ottoman Empire: he went east through books 1. Golius did make the journey, through Syria and Iraq to Constantinople, and came back with more than three hundred manuscripts 2. Their books arrived in the same Leiden building, and the study of the Islamic world followed them 3.

What it draws on · 3

Memorial Stone for Scaliger

de man

Joseph Justus Scaliger was born in 1540 in Agen, in France, the son of the scholar Julius Caesar Scaliger. He was a philologist — someone who reads, compares and dates texts. He did travel: Italy, England, Scotland. But he never set foot in the Ottoman Empire. He went east through books.

Sources · 2
  • Universiteit Leiden — 'Josephus Scaliger: groot geleerde en brompot' (2020)
  • Leidse hoogleraren — Scaliger (Della Scala), Josephus Justus (hoogleraren.leidenuniv.nl/id/2136)
The House of Jacob Golius

de reis naar Aleppo en Constantinopel

Between 1625 and 1629 Golius worked as chancellor at the Dutch consulate in Aleppo and travelled through Syria and Iraq to Constantinople. He came back with more than three hundred Arabic, Turkish and Persian manuscripts — and with a command of Turkish and Persian that he had picked up along the way.

Sources · 3
  • Leiden In Motion: De Diversity Walk — Stichting Güney / Turksarchief.nl
  • Jacobus Golius — Encyclopaedia Iranica
  • Leiden University Libraries — Collection Guides: Jacobus Golius collection (ubl172)
Leiden University - Islamic Studies

waar de collecties aankwamen

So this is the building into which Leiden's Oriental collections arrived: Scaliger's bequest in 1609, the manuscripts Golius brought from Aleppo and Constantinople, and what came after. In the same house the Islamic world is taught today. The books came first; the subject followed them.

Sources · 3
  • Universiteit Leiden — Oude UB: universiteitsbibliotheek 1595-1983 aan het Rapenburg
  • 'Tous mes livres de langues estrangeres': het oosterse legaat van Josephus Justus Scaliger (1609)
  • Leiden University Libraries — Jacobus Golius collection

Shares its places with · 9

Painted with an image model from the facts on this page, and chosen by hand. City in Motion.

I'd love to know that someone came by — as a number, never a name. May I count your visit? And if an ad brought you here, may I tell that ad it worked?