) During his twenty years of permanent residence in Constantinople, Warner acquired a private collection of slightly over 900 manuscripts in Middle Eastern languages (about two-thirds of which are in Arabic), 73 Hebrew manuscripts, some Greek manuscripts and two manuscripts in Armenian. Interesting but not unique is his collection of 218 Hebrew printed books. Warner acquired his manuscripts and books through the lively antiquarian booktrade in Constantinople, receiving help and advice from Arabs originally from
Aleppo such as Muhammad al-‘Urdi al-Halabi (c. 1602-1660), whose faltering career probably forced him to offer his services to Warner, and the Aleppo-born Sâlih Efendi, known as Ibn Sallum, a physician-in-ordinary to Sultan
Mehmed IV who died in 1669. Another Aleppine, Niqula ibn Butrus al-Halabi or Nicolaus Petri, worked for him as an amanuensis. Warner’s Oriental correspondence has been edited by
M.Th. Houtsma (1887). Documentary evidence shows that Warner used middlemen to acquire his collection at auctions, and ex-libris annotations show that many of Warner’s manuscripts hail from high-ranking Ottoman bureaucrats or scholars. In 1659 Warner had purchased a substantial part of the private collection of the celebrated bibliophile encyclopedist
Kâtip Çelebi, also known as 'Hajji Khalifa'. Following the death of Çelebi, the collection, which had been the largest private library in Constantinople, was sold by his estate. This acquisition of Middle Eastern literature comprised items that traced to the private libraries of Ottoman sultans and a number of manuscripts originate from the libraries of
Ayyubid emirs and
Mamluk sultans. The majority of the collection treats secular subjects such as language and literature, history, philosophy and science. The Hebrew manuscripts originate mainly from the
Karaites, a non-rabbinical Jewish sect which attracted a great deal of interest among contemporary Protestant scholars from Europe. The collection also contains Warner’s scholarly notes, most of which remain unedited. Highlights include the unique manuscript of
Ibn Hazm’s
Tawq al-hamama (), ‘
the Ring of the Dove’, a treatise on love and friendship (Or. 927), first edited by D.K. Pétrof in 1914 and many times since, and the oldest extant illustrated Arabic manuscript on a scientific subject, the
Kitab al-hasha’ish (), a translation of
De Materia Medica by
Dioscorides Pedanius. The manuscript is dated Ramadan 475 / February 1083 (Or. 289). An item of palaeographical interest is a manuscript dated 252 / 866 of
Kitab Gharib al-hadith () by
Abu ‘Ubayd al-Qasim b. Sallam al-Harawi, the oldest dated Arabic manuscript on paper in the Western world (Or. 298). == Legatum Warnerianum to Leiden ==