Without Each Other’s Knowledge: Muṣṭafā al-Qabbānī and Abraham Shalom Yahuda’s Parallel Editorial Pursuits of al-Ghazālī’s al-Ḥikma fī makhlūqāt Allāh

That two scholars—al-Qabbānī in Cairo and Yahuda in Strasbourg and then Berlin—were simultaneously preparing editions of the same text on the basis of the same single manuscript, neither aware of the other’s labors, vividly encapsulates the challenges that beset the recovery and publication of rare Arabic texts at the turn of the twentieth century. It also throws into relief the crucial, if largely invisible, role played by intermediary figures such as Aḥmad Zakī and Ḥāmid Wālī, whose mediation between European repositories and Middle Eastern editors made such ventures possible in the first place.