Biblioteche arabe tra resistenza e memoria

This contribution starts from an artistic installation made by a contem- porary Palestinian-born artist in New York, in 2014, as part of a project called Ex libris. The modern graffito that reproduces a note of property of a book purchased in 1892, falls within the category of the so-called ‘belligerent literacy’ since it focuses the attention on the property of the volume rather than on its text. In connection with the contents of this graffito, in the second part of this contribution some notes of property and purchase of Arab-Christian manuscripts – as well as notes record- ing reader/copyist’s names and pious foundations (Ar. waqf) – are analysed. The information that is possible to gather from these notes is multifarious. On the one hand it sheds light on the biography of the books, that pass through the shelves of different libraries and the hands of various owners. On the other hand, it offers many details on the people involved in the use or in the acquisition of the manu- scripts themselves.