History of the Arabic Written Tradition

History of the Arabic Written Tradition (German: Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, or GAL) is a reference work produced by the German scholar Carl Brockelmann and first published in two editions by Brill in Leiden in 1898 and 1902.^[1]

History of the Arabic Written Tradition

Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur 1909 - Carl Brockelmann
Author	Carl Brockelmann
Original title	Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur

It lists around 25,000 individual works by some 18,000 authors from the Arabic literary tradition.^[2]

Publication

The first edition of the work was first published in two volumes (1898–1902), and aimed to give a framework which divided Arabic literature into periods and subjects.^[3] However, Brockelmann later wrote a series of three Supplementbände ('supplement volumes') that vastly expanded the original work and then revised the original volumes, so the final work comprised the following:

• Brockelmann, Carl (1943). Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur. Vol. Band I (2. den Supplementbänden angepasste Auflage ed.). Leiden: Brill.
• Brockelmann, Carl (1949). Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur. Vol. Band II (2. den Supplementbänden angepasste Auflage ed.). Leiden: Brill.
• Brockelmann, Carl (1937). Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur. Vol. Supplementband I (1. Auflage ed.). Leiden: Brill.
• Brockelmann, Carl (1938). Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur. Vol. Supplementband II (1. Auflage ed.). Leiden: Brill.
• Brockelmann, Carl (1942). Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur. Vol. Supplementband III.1–2 (1. Auflage ed.). Leiden: Brill.

Between 2016 and 2018, GAL was published by Brill in an updated English translation as History of the Arabic Written Tradition.^[4]

Over the years other academics would add volumes to the work, for example Fuat Sezgin has updated Brockelmann's list by adding some 12,000 titles and 9,000 writers.^[2]

Influence

The work is considered a classic of Orientalist scholarship and it remains a fundamental reference volume for all Arabic literature.^[5] Abd ar-Rahman Badawi in his Encyclopedia of Orientalists describes it as "the single and essential source for everything relating to Arabic manuscripts and the places where they are kept."^[6]