Catalogue of Manuscripts of Ayasofya Libraries

The complete catalogue of the Ayasofya (Hagia Sophia) Library manuscript collection—currently held at Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi Library in Istanbul—describes what is considered the rarest and most valuable Islamic manuscripts collection in the world, and is witness to the depth and rich knowledge of Islamic culture.

This project was concluded through a fruitful collaboration between Al-Furqān Islamic Heritage Foundation, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi Library, and the Research Centre For Islamic History, Art and Culture (IRCICA). A team of specialised cataloguers was chosen, who then received intensive training prior to embarking on achieving this grand scientific milestone.

The catalogue of the Ayasofya Library manuscript collection that we present today describes the richest collection located in Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi Library. Holdings are in several languages, such as Arabic (the majority), Farsi, Ottoman Turkish, and others.

The cards in this catalogue numbered 8,797, containing highly-detailed descriptions of 8,640 cards relating to Ayasofya Library, 125 cards relating to Saad Allah Kutubi endowment, 10 cards relating to other endowments, and 22 cards relating to unknown endowment sources. These cards are distributed across 4,508 monographs (sing. risālah) within 925 collections (sing. majmǖ‘), and 4,289 single manuscripts—a grand total of 5,214 bound volumes.

This catalogue contains the most important and most complete information available, following the cataloguing methodology adopted by Al-Furqān Foundation. This included many kinds of bibliographic and codicological information, such as author name; type of script, written surface, and ink; decoration present on the manuscript, and notes (quyǖd) found within, such as ownership inscriptions (tamallukāt), endowment notes (waqfiyyāt), transmission certificates (ijāzāt), audition certificates (samā‘āt), etc.; also reproducing the manuscript beginning (incipit) and ending text (explicit). In addition, verifying what could be verified by referring to key sources, such as Kâtip Çelebī’s Kashf al-Żunǖn, Brockelmann’s and Sezgin’s works, and others. Members of IRCICA Manuscripts Section and Al-Furqān Foundation’s team carefully checked each card and corrected any errors. All this, so as to provide an adequate overview and sufficient information on each manuscript for researchers and interested persons, facilitating their task, and saving time.

We express immense gratitude to the management of Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi Library and IRCICA for their cooperation, the respected instructors, who conducted the cataloguing training course especially for this project, all members of the team, who contributed to preparing this catalogue—cataloguers, editors, checkers, and technicians, and the esteemed erudite Prof. Dr. Ramazan Şeşen, who was responsible for editing the catalogue.