CHAPTER FOUR

The Library of the University of Amsterdam, not to be confused with the Vrije Universiteit van Amsterdam (Free University of Amsterdam), was established in 1877, when the existing Athenaeum Illustre was turned into a regular university. The library had formerly been a municipal library which had been founded in 1578 and housed in the New Church. It later served as library for the Athenaeum upon its foundation in 1632 when the manuscripts and printed booksweremoved from the church to the loft over its teaching rooms. Oriental languages, in particular Hebrew, were taught at the Athenaeum between 1686–1877, and among the professors was Joannes Willmet (1804–1835), whose manuscript collection is described below (as part of the Academy of Arts and Sciences collection, kept in the Leiden University Library). Christianus Ravius, some of whose manuscripts were acquired by theUniversity Library ofUtrecht (described below), vainly tried to get appointed professor in Hebrew in 1646–1647. The library only occasionally purchased or was donated Oriental manuscripts. The fifrst Turkish manuscripts, parts of a 17th-century Bible translation, were acquired in 1783 from the library of a pastor of Amsterdam, Thomas Vieroot (1698–1780). In 1875 a large collection of, mostly, letters, kept in twenty boxes was offered to themunicipality of Amsterdam byW.G.A. Diederichs; the texts had been gathered in the Netherlands, Germany, England, France, Italy and elsewhere, by his father, Pieter Arnold Diederichs (1804–1874), bookseller and publisher in Amsterdam. The collection, comprising c. 35,000 items, came into the possession of the library in 1892. With the exeption of the German and Swiss items, the collection was described in printed catalogues during the years 1893–1917. A few letters, among them offifcial documents issued by the Porte, contain texts in Turkish or are closely related to the history of the Ottoman Empire. They are all unique, and some of the documents are of an unusual format and content. In later years, the library acquired more items in the genre, in particular a small collection of letters mostly addressed to the traveller, writer and envoy to the Porte (internuntius), Anton Graf