THIS PAPER is concerned with the making of the Leiden edition of al-Ṭabarī's Taʾrīkh. It is therefore not a paper on al-Ṭabarī, unlike most other papers presented in this volume, but rather on the history of nineteenth-century Orientalism. Neither is it a paper on the broad outlines of European Orientalism or its philosophical or political backgrounds, but rather on its everyday practice, its sordid details and silly mistakes, but also on the tenacity and hard work of a group of men, quite competent, but maybe not quite of this world. In other words, it is not history but “petite histoire”, and I hope it will be judged as such. Before I enter upon the details I will start with a short resumé of the well-known facts:

The Taʾrikh of al-Tabari was published in Leiden from 1879-1901 under the title Annales quos scripsit Abu Djafar Mohammed ibn Djarir at-Tabari. The editor-in-chief was Michael Jan de Goeje (1836-1909), Professor of Arabic at Leiden and curator of the University Library's extensive Oriental collections. De Goeje, a modest man, believed that the study of Arabic and Islam was best served by exploring and publishing the primary sources. He therefore limited himself to making catalogues and reliable text editions, mainly of early Islamic historiography and geography.

De Goeje had excellent contacts with German orientalists, mainly because of his intimate friendship with the semiticist Theodor Nöldeke (1836-1930), whom he had first met during his student days. Not surprisingly, he turned to his colleagues from the German-speaking world to help him undertake the vast project of editing the Taʾrikh. De Goeje himself led the search for manuscripts until a complete copy could be reconstructed. He edited one-sixth of the text, did all the proofreading and kept a voluminous correspondence going between all persons concerned. He was also responsible for the introduction, the glossaries and the indices.

From the beginning to the end, the whole project leaned heavily upon the subsidies provided by various governments, learned societies and private persons, both from East and West, and the willingness to subscribe to one or more copies.

The edition was published by the firm of E.J. Brill, since 1871 led by Adriaan van Oordt, the son of a wealthy Rotterdam sugar refiner, and Frans de Stoppelaar, a former teacher of modern languages. These two men took over the modestly sized publishing firm from its founder, Evert Jan Brill, and transformed it into the Netherlands’ foremost orientalist publisher.