Manuscripts are like vampires: Libraries and their uncertain histories on the island of Jerba, Tunisia

Abstract

This article explores the methodological possibilities for using unverifiable, contradictory, or demonstrably false accounts of the past for historical research. Drawing from the methodological example of historical studies on accusations of vampirism in colonial East Africa, it presents histories of three Ibadi Muslim manuscript libraries on the island of Jerba, Tunisia. These stories contain contradictory or otherwise unverifiable elements, each of which raises methodological questions for its use as a historical source. The article argues that by drawing upon the methodological premise of these studies of vampires, historians can approach far more basic questions of historical research regarding chronology, contradictory evidence, and veracity. 1 | INTRODUCTION What are historians to do with unverifiable or demonstrably untrue information about the past? In this article, I view this question through the lens of stories about manuscript libraries: The family used to have a large manuscript collection but at some point began secretly selling it to foreigners, book by book. Another family acquired its impressive library not through the collecting efforts of its founder but instead through a brazen act of thievery. In an especially dramatic account, a member of the family intentionally set the library ablaze, reducing one of the oldest manuscript collections on the island to a pile of ashes. Stories like these of the destruction, concealment, theft, or other loss of manuscripts circulate widely today on the island of Jerba in southern Tunisia. An Arabic manuscript culture thrived on this Mediterranean island for centuries from the medieval era until the middle of the 20th century, resulting in the formation of dozens of family and mosque libraries. This is especially true for the island's Ibadi Muslims, a minority community in North Africa and the Arabian Peninsula that is neither Sunni nor Shiʿi. Ibadis in Jerba have maintained family libraries housing some of the only copies of their community's texts in existence (