III. Mustafa’s Bostancılar Ocağı Library and the Books Donated by Him
Muhammed Özler1
, Kadir Demirel2
1Specialist, Turkish Historical Society, Department of Scientifical Studies; PhD Student, Selçuk University, Institute of Social Sciences, Discipline of Modern History, Ankara/ TÜRKİYE
2Specialist, Turkish Historical Society, Directorate of Institutional Archives, Ankara/TÜRKİYE
Keywords: Mustafa III, Library, Book, Ottoman Book Culture, The Library of Bostancılar Ocağı.
Abstract
Although there is some information about the Library of Bostancılar Ocağı founded by III. Mustafa, an independent and comprehensive study has not been made about the library in question until now. The limited information about this library, which was established in the eighteenth century when the Ottoman librarianship reached its peak, and the fact that the catalog of its books has not been published, made it difficult to understand the cultural value of the aforementioned library.
In order to contribute to the Ottoman librarianship, this article was written on the basis of the charter of the waqf and archive sources; it consists of an introduction, two main sections, and appendices. In the introduction, by talking briefly talking IMustafa III’s life,we will explain his interest in books, and present examples of libraries established by sultans in the first half of the eighteenth century. In the first part, we will evaluate the establishment of the Library of Bostancılar Ocağı, its operation, personnel, personnel wages, physical structure, and the process of transferring its books to the Lâleli Library. In the second part, after introducing the catalog of the library, we will give statistical information about the books, indicate the subjects of the books, and talk about the characteristics of the books in general. In the appendices, we will publish the full list of the books in the library, the accounting records of the library and the documents regarding the process of transferring the library’s books to the Lâleli Library.
This work is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC).
The Author(s) declare(s) that there is no conflict of interest.