Treasures of Knowledge: An Inventory of the Ottoman Palace Library (1502/3-1503/4) (2 Vols)

Volume I: Essays / Volume II: Transliteration and Facsimile Register of Books (Kitāb Al-Kutub), MS Török F. 59; Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Könyvtára Keleti Gyűjtemény (Oriental Collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences)
Erscheinungsjahr 2019
ISBN: 978-90-04-40248-5
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 14, 1510 Seiten, Format (B × H): 224 mm x 280 mm, Gewicht: 5526 g

Reihe: Muqarnas, Supplements

The subject of this two-volume publication is an inventory of manuscripts in the book treasury of the Topkapi Palace in Istanbul, commissioned by the Ottoman sultan Bayezid II from his royal librarian 'Atufi in the year 908 (1502–3) and transcribed in a clean copy in 909 (1503–4). This unicum inventory preserved in the Oriental Collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Könyvtára Keleti Gyujtemény, MS Török F. 59) records over 5,000 volumes, and more than 7,000 titles, on virtually every branch of human erudition at the time. The Ottoman palace library housed an unmatched encyclopedic collection of learning and literature; hence, the publication of this unique inventory opens a larger conversation about Ottoman and Islamic intellectual/cultural history. The very creation of such a systematically ordered inventory of books raises broad questions about knowledge production and practices of collecting, readership, librarianship, and the arts of the book at the dawn of the sixteenth century.

The first volume contains twenty-eight interpretative essays on this fascinating document, authored by a team of scholars from diverse disciplines, including Islamic and Ottoman history, history of science, arts of the book and codicology, agriculture, medicine, astrology, astronomy, occultism, mathematics, philosophy, theology, law, mysticism, political thought, ethics, literature (Arabic, Persian, Turkish/Turkic), philology, and epistolary. Following the first three essays by the editors on implications of the library inventory as a whole, the other essays focus on particular fields of knowledge under which books are catalogued in MS Török F. 59, each accompanied by annotated lists of entries. The second volume presents a transliteration of the Arabic manuscript, which also features an Ottoman Turkish preface on method, together with a reduced-scale facsimile.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Necipo&

Necipoglu, Gülru

Kafadar, Cemal

Fleischer, Cornell H

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Kunst Kunstgeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Geschichte einzelner Länder Naher & Mittlerer Osten
• Interdisziplinäres Bibliothekswesen, Informationswissenschaften Buchgeschichte, Bibliotheksgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Contents

VOLUME I: ESSAYS

PREFACE BY THE EDITORS

Overview and Significance of the Palace Library Inventory

1. Gülru Necipoglu, The Organization of Knowledge in the Ottoman Palace Library: An Encyclopedic Collection and Its Inventory

2. Cemal Kafadar, Between Amasya and Istanbul: Bayezid II, His Librarian, and the Textual Turn of the Late Fifteenth Century

3. Cornell H. Fleischer, Learning and Sovereignty in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

The Palace Library as a Collection and the Book Arts

4. Zeynep Atbas, Artistic Aspects of Sultan Bayezid II’s Book Treasury Collection: Extant Volumes Preserved at the Topkapi Palace Museum Library

5. Zeren Tanindi, Arts of the Book: The Illustrated and Illuminated Manuscripts Listed in 'Atufi’s Inventory

6. Judith Pfeiffer, Prizing the Divan: The Early Sixteenth-Century Ottoman Literary Canon as Mirrored in the Inventories of Müeyyedzade’s and Bayezid II’s Library Collections

Book Titles and Their Disciplines in the Palace Library Inventory

7. Mohsen Goudarzi, Books on Exegesis (tafsir) and Qur'anic Readings (qira'at): Inspiration, Intellect, and the Interpretation of Scripture in Post-Classical Islam 

8. Recep Gürkan Göktas, On the Hadith Collection of Bayezid II’s Palace Library 

9. Guy Burak, The Section on Prayers, Invocations, Unique Qualities of the Qur'an, and Magic Squares in the Palace Library Inventory

10. Abdurrahman Atçil, The kalam (Rational Theology) Section in the Palace Library Inventory

11. Himmet Taskömür, Books on Islamic Jurisprudence, Schools of Law, and Biographies of Imams of the Hanafi School

12. Mürteza Bedir, Books on Islamic Legal Theory (usul al-fiqh)

13. Cemal Kafadar and Ahmet Karamustafa, Books on the Lives of Saints, Sufism, and Sermons

14. Hüseyin Yilmaz, Books on Ethics and Politics: The Art of Governing the Self and Others at the Ottoman Court

15. Nükhet Varlik, Books on Medicine: Medical Knowledge at Work

16. Aleksandar Shopov, “Books on Agriculture (al-filaha) Pertaining to Medical Science” and Ottoman Agricultural Science and Practice around 1500

17. Cornell H. Fleischer and Kaya Sahin, On the Works of a Historical Nature in the Bayezid II Library Inventory

18. Pinar Emiralioglu, Books on the Wonders of Creation and Geography in 'Atufi’s Inventory

19. Tahera Qutbuddin, Books on Arabic Philology and Literature: A Teaching Collection Focused on Religious Learning and the State Chancery 

20. Sooyong Kim, An Ottoman Order of Persian Verse

21. Christopher Markiewicz, Books on the Secretarial Arts and Literary Prose

22. Ferenc Csirkés, Turkish/Turkic Books of Poetry, Turkish and Persian Lexicography: The Politics of Language under Bayezid II

23. Noah Gardiner, Books on Occult Sciences

24. A. Tunç Sen and Cornell H. Fleischer, Books on Astrology, Practical Astronomy, and Celestial Magic

25. Jamil Ragep and The McGill Astral Science Team, Astronomical and Other Mathematical Sciences in 'Atufi’s Inventory of Bayezid II’s Library

26. Elaheh Kheirandish, Books on Mathematical and Mixed-Mathematical Sciences: Arithmetic, Geometry, Optics, and Mechanics

27. Khaled El-Rouayheb, Books on Logic (mantiq) and Dialectics (jadal)

28. Dimitri Gutas, Philosophical Manuscripts: Two Alternative Philosophies

APPENDICES

Appendix I-III: Some Identified Manuscripts Stamped with Bayezid II’s Seal

APPENDIX I: Zeynep Atbas, Preliminary List of Manuscripts Stamped with Bayezid II’s Seal in the Topkapi Palace Museum Library

APPENDIX II: Zeren Tanindi, Preliminary List of Manuscripts Stamped with Bayezid II’s Seal and Transferred from the Topkapi Palace Inner Treasury to Other Library Collections

APPENDIX III WITH PLATES FROM MANUSCRIPTS AT THE TOPKAPI PALACE MUSEUM LIBRARY: Gülru Necipoglu, Some Books Bearing the Seal of Bayezid II and/or Dedications to Him: A Comparison of Titles Inscribed by His Librarian and Corresponding Entries in the Library Inventory

Appendix IV-V: English Translations of the Librarian 'Atufi’s Ottoman Turkish and Arabic Prefaces to the Palace Library Inventory

APPENDIX IV: Gülru Necipoglu, Translation of 'Atufi’s Ottoman Turkish Preface to the Palace Library Inventory

APPENDIX V: Mohsen Goudarzi, Translation of 'Atufi’s Arabic Preface to the Palace Library Inventory

VOLUME II: TRANSLITERATION AND FACSIMILE "REGISTER OF BOOKS” (KITAB AL-KUTUB)

MS Török F. 59, Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Könyvtára Keleti Gyujtemény

(Oriental Collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences)

Principles Observed in Transliterating MS Török F. 59

Transliterated Text of MS Török F. 59, prepared by Himmet Taskömür and Hesna Ergun Taskömür

Facsimile of MS Török F. 59

Über Autor(innen)

Gülru Necipoglu (PhD, Harvard University, 1986) is the Aga Khan Professor and Director of the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard University. Her books include Architecture, Ceremonial and Power: The Topkapi Palace in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries (1991), The Topkapi Scroll: Geometry and Ornament in Islamic Architecture (1995), and The Age of Sinan: Architectural Culture in the Ottoman Empire (2005). She recently edited The Arts of Ornamental Geometry: A Persian Compendium on Similar and Complementary Interlocking Figures (2017) and A Companion to Islamic Art and Architecture in the Wiley Blackwell Companions to Art History series (co-editor F. Barry Flood, 2017).

Cemal Kafadar (PhD, McGill University, 1987) is Professor of History and the Vehbi Koç Professor of Turkish Studies in the History Department at Harvard University. Among his publications are Between Two Worlds: The Construction of the Ottoman State (1995); a volume of essays on four “ordinary lives” and on autobiographical writing (in Turkish, 2011); and “A Rome of One’s Own: Reflections on Cultural Geography and Identity in the Lands of Rum,” Muqarnas 24 (2007) (expanded version published as a book in Turkish, 2018). He has also edited (with Halil Inalcik) Süleyman the Second and His Time (1995). His 2014 article on “the history of coffee and the nighttime” is the subject of a current book project.

Cornell H. Fleischer (PhD, Princeton University, 1982) is the Kanuni Süleyman Professor of Ottoman and Modern Turkish Studies in the departments of History and of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations at the University of Chicago. A 1988–93 MacArthur Fellow, he is the author, among other publications, of Bureaucrat and Intellectual in the Ottoman Empire: The Historian Mustafa Ali(1986); “The Lawgiver as Messiah,” in Soliman le magnifique et son temps (1992); “Ancient Wisdom and New Sciences,” in Falnama: The Book of Omens (2009); and “A Mediterranean Apocalypse: Prophecies of Empire in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries,” JESHO 61 (2018). He also supervised post–Dayton Accord elections in the former Yugoslavia, 1996–98.