Sebastian Tengnagel (d. 1636) was librarian of the Vienna Court Library between 1608 and 1636 and is considered the founder of the oriental manuscript collection. Tengnagel bequeathed his private libra-ry, which also contained a considerable number of Arabic, Persian and Turkish manuscripts, to the lib-rary after his death. From correspondences and ot-her documents in the Austrian National Library, we know that he had access to a Turkish prisoner, Derviş İbrahim, from whom he had selected Arabic, Persian and Turkish works copied. These were meant to be published but unfortunately Tengnagel failed in doing so during his lifetime. Nevertheless, Tengnagel left behind numerous multilingual and multiscript notebooks in which some traces of the Turkish prisoner Derviş İbrahim can be found. In addition to a letter that is part of an Ottoman manuscript, the prisoner scattered notes and poems throughout various of Tengnagel’s notebooks. In my presentation, I will critically categorize the ego-documents left behind by the prisoner and present possible interpretations of how to extract certain information from his poems and examine them as ego-documents.
