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het legaat

Scaliger died in Leiden on 21 January 1609, after sixteen years in the city. In his will he left the University Library 'tous mes livres de langues estrangeres, Hebraiques, Syriens, Arabiques, Ethiopiens' — all my books in foreign tongues. By the library catalogue of 1612 that came to 210 manuscripts and printed works, besides 48 Greek and Latin manuscripts. On that bequest Leiden grew into a centre for the study of the Middle East; its Oriental manuscript collection now holds more than 27,000.

Legatum Warnerianum

In that will Warner left his entire collection to Leiden University: a thousand manuscripts from the Middle East, gathered in the years he lived in Constantinople. They are the core of the Oriental collection, and that collection is still called the Legatum Warnerianum — even though scholars before and after him added a great deal to it.

wat ervan overbleef

Het Oosters Antiquarium closed in 2006. On 16 May 2007 Rijk Smitskamp gave his entire business archive to Leiden University Library. Like the books of Scaliger, Warner and Golius, the shop's papers ended up in the same library.

wie ze stichtte

The founders came from the wealthy burgher class and the lesser nobility, and they set it down in their wills: part of their estate was to become housing for poor fellow townspeople. The hofjes were therefore not for the founders themselves. Whoever came to live there was old and poor, and lived alongside others in the same position — care and company in a single courtyard.

de collectie

Of those manuscripts Golius bought nearly two hundred directly for the university; the rest stayed in his own hands at first. His collection of Arabic, Turkish and Persian manuscripts now belongs to Leiden University Libraries and can largely be consulted digitally.