A History Of Ottoman Libraries

This volume tells the story of the development and the organization of Ottoman libraries from the fourteenth through the twentieth century. The book surveys the phases through which the history of Ottoman libraries evolved and lays out the organization, the personnel, and day-to-day functioning of these institutions.

A History of Ottoman Libraries tells the story of the development and the organization of Ottoman libraries from the fourteenth through the twentieth century. In the first part, the book surveys the phases through which the Ottoman libraries evolved from a few shelves of books to sizable, endowed collections housed in free-standing library buildings. Ottoman libraries were mainly established as charitable foundations, that is by endowing the books and steady income for the maintenance of the collection and the library building. The second part of the book focuses on the organization, the personnel, and the day-to-day functioning of Ottoman libraries. This first complete history of Ottoman libraries was written based on hitherto untapped archival sources.

Acknowledgments
Illustrations
Note on Transcription and Dates

Preface

Introduction

Part 1: Historical Development
1. Early Ottoman Libraries (1299-1453)
2. From College and Mosque Libraries to the Independent Library (1453-1650s)
3. Independent and Large College Libraries (1650s–1730)
4. The Expansion and Reorganization of the Ottoman Library System (1730-1839)
5. Foundation Libraries in the Age of Reforms (1839-1922)

Part 2: Organization
6. Personnel
7. The Establishment and Maintenance of Collections
8. Catalogues and Cataloguing
9. Services Offered
10. Budgets and Audits
11. Library Buildings and Furnishing

Conclusion

Bibliography

İsmail Erünsal obtained his PhD from Edinburgh University in 1977. He taught at Istanbul University’s Department of Library Sciences, and later chaired the Department of Archival Studies of Marmara University from 1990 to 2006. Professor Erünsal has extensively published on the history of libraries, booksellers, and book culture in the Islamic world.

“Surely a study that historians of Ottoman culture will refer to for many decades, this work impresses the reader by the broad documentation on libraries containing manuscripts germane to Islamic studies, which the author has investigated during a long and distinguished career. Prof. Erünsal has used a large number of pious/charitable foundation deeds made out by members of the Ottoman governing elite as well as by rich and public-spirited persons desiring to promote Islamic scholarship. His work thus clarifies how book collections until the later 1600s always were part of Islamic colleges, acquiring the manuscripts needed by their teachers and students. Even when eighteenth-century donors established independent libraries, these institutions often allowed for teaching, perhaps to a group of amateurs broader than the students and teachers benefiting from college libraries. After all, the latter were part of institutions, whose aim was to prepare students for careers as judges and teachers. Moreover, the author explains in a cogent fashion how in the nineteenth century, the dependence of Ottoman libraries on the conditions established by long-deceased founders made adaptation to the needs of a modernizing empire very difficult.

In addition, Prof. Erünsal has cleared up misunderstandings that have bedeviled historians for a long time. In particular, twentieth-century scholars had often assumed that the order of the chief mufti serving Ahmed III (r. 1703-30), to the effect that texts concerning non-r