Conference Programme

Wednesday 5 November 2025

1730-1830 Keynote Lecture 1:

Prof. Tülay Artan (Sabanci University, Istanbul), What you are looking for is in the library

Thursday 6 November 2025

0900-1015   Session 1: The Palace Treasury

• Dimitri Kastritsis – “Bayezid II’s Library and Fifteenth-Century Ottoman Perspectives on World History”
• Emine Fetvacı – “The Imperial Library and Artistic Production”
• Nil Baydar – “Rebinding Practices in the Library of Sultan Mehmed II: Technical Structures and Material Properties of Early Manuscripts Rebound in Textile during the 15^th Century”

1015-1130   Session 2: Metropolitan elites

• Fatih Yücel – “Beyond the List, Beneath the Shelves: Intentionality and Identity in the Library of Üveys Pasha (d. 1591)”
• Elif Derin – “Family Continuity in the Preservation and Expansion of Ottoman Waqf Libraries: The Case of the Aşir Efendi Library”
• Ioannis Kyriakantonakis – “Constantinople’s ‘Little Jerusalem’: The Brotherhood of the Holy Sepulchre and Their Metochion since the 17th Century”

1145-1300   Session 3:  After Köprülü

• Tufan Kara – “Tracing Manuscript Histories: The Paratextual Notes in the Fâzıl Ahmed Pasha Collection of the Köprülü Library”
• Amal Cavender – “From Mosque Collections to Knowledge Centres: The Materiality and Imperial Dynamics of Ottoman Libraries (1678–1754)”
• Tahsin Hazirbulan & Mehmet İnbaşı – “A Library from the Palace to the Provinces: ‘Bostancı Ocağı Library’” via zoom

1400-1515   Session 4: Imperial Reform: Sultan Mahmud I

• Menderes Velioğlu – “Light of Osman, Shadow of Mahmud, Darkness of Others: With Whose Books was the Nuruosmaniye Library Founded?”
• Nimet İpek – “Erased Histories of Libraries: Tracing Defaced Ownership and Endowment Notes in the Libraries Founded by Mahmud I”
• Kadir Şahin & Nurefşan Ülker – “The Connection between the I. Mahmud Library and the Museum of Turkish and Islamic Arts in Istanbul”

1515-1630   Session 5: Sufi networks

• Ekin Can Göksoy – “Libraries before Libraries: Personal and Institutional Book Collections, and Reading Networks in Early Modern Ottoman Bursa”
• Aslıhan Gürbüzel – “Between the Imperial and the Local: The Tekke Library of the Gazzizade Family in Bursa”
• Tobias Heinzelmann – “The Library of an Ottoman Sufi Convent and the Waqf of Halet Efendi”

1645-1800   Session 6: Reading across Empire

• Ghayde Ghraowi – “Arabic Literature, Ottoman Libraries: The Rayḥānat al-alibbā at the Imperial Centre”
• Renaud Soler – “The Law of the Market: Transfers of Manuscripts of a Life of the Prophet from the Arab Provinces to Istanbul between the 15^th and 19^th Centuries”
• Akif E. Yerlioğlu – “Libraries as Spaces of Medical Knowledge Production and Circulation in the Early Modern Ottoman Empire”

Friday 7 November 2025

0930-1045   Session 7: Ottoman Heartlands

• Büşra Aktaş Kütükçü & Esra Karayel Muhacır – “Sustaining Ottoman Intellectual Heritage: A Study on the Bolu Yıldırım Bayezid Madrasa Library and Its Collection”
• Agron Islami & Orges Drançolli – “Traces of Ottoman-Style Libraries in Kosovo: The Case of the Hadum Library”
• Rawda El Hajji – “The Corpus of Süleyman Efendi and Its Multilayered Manuscripts”

1045-1200   Session 8: Bilād al-Shām

• Avinoam Stillman – “The Library of Jacob Tsemah (d. 1666): A Sephardi Scholar in the Ottoman World”
• Nir Shafir – “The Private Library of ʿAbd al-Ghanī al-Nābulusī (1641–1731): An Intellectual, Cultural, and Economic Perspective”
• Boris Liebrenz – “Bibliophilia in 18th-century Damascus: The Book Collection of ʿAbdallāh b. Zayn al-Dīn al-Buṣrawī”

1210-1300   Session 9:  Miṣr: Cairo Libraries

• Stephanie Luescher – “Al-Muẓaffarī’s Books: A Private Collection in early Ottoman Cairo” via zoom
• Mohamed Abouseif Abdelazeim Khedr – “Ottoman Libraries in Cairo in Light of Archaeological Evidence and Waqf Documents” via zoom

1400-1515   Session 10: Networking peripheries

• Augustin Jomier – “Is the 19th-Century Tunisian Elite’s Bibliophily an Ottoman Bibliophily?”
• Paul Love – “Migrant Manuscript Libraries in Late-Ottoman Trablus al Gharb”
• André Binggeli & Alice Croq – “Syriac Monastic Libraries and Their Networks: Transmission of Knowledge and Cultural Identity in the Ottoman Period”

1515-1630   Session 11: Late Urban Libraries

• Joud Nassan Agha – “Books, Endowments, and Legal Frameworks: The Library of Khālid al-Naqshabandī in Late Ottoman Damascus”
• Matteo Pimpinelli – “Private Libraries in the Ottoman World: Yūsuf Ṣayfī, his Manuscript Collection, and Book Culture in 13th/19th-Century Bilād al-Shām”
• Garrett Davidson – “Two Late-Ottoman Private Libraries Preserved in Princeton University Library’s Yahuda Collection”

Saturday 8 November 2025

0930-1045   Session 12: Out of Empire: Exiles

• Boris Adjemian – “Ottoman Armenian Heritage and History in a Diasporic Library in Paris”
• Moya Carey – “Ottoman exile in Cairo: volume 4 of Darir’s Siyer-i Nebi (CBL T 419)”
• Eve Lacey – “Bound Abroad: Itinerant Collections of Ottoman Books at Cambridge University”

1100-1240   Session 13: Extractions I: Demand

• Seyed Mohammad Hossein Hakim – “Reverse Transmission of Books from the Ottoman Empire to Iran: Ottoman Royal Manuscripts in Iranian Libraries”
• Jonathan Haddad – “The Snake in the Library: François Sevin’s Mission to Istanbul, 1728–30”
• Michael Erdman – “Long Distance Bargaining: Constructing a Syriac Book Trade through the Letters of Jeremiah Shamer and Eduard Sachau”
• Güler Doğan Averbek – “Planning to Plunder the Libraries of Istanbul during the Balkan Wars”

1400-1515   Session 14: Extractions II: Supply

• Kiraz Perinçek Karavit – “‘Portrait of a Dervish’: Imaging a Sufi Bibliophile in the Long Nineteenth Century”
• Evyn Kropf – “Lives and Afterlives of the Gümüşhanevî Foundation Libraries”
• Dominique Akhoun-Schwarb – “The Tiflis Manuscripts: Tale of a Journey”

1515-1630   Session 15: Retrospection: Empire in the Republic

• Christiane Czygan – “Inaccessible Treasures: Manuscripts in the Istanbul Archaeology Museum’s Library”
• Baki Tezcan – “Endowing a Hegemony: Ottoman Libraries and Sunni Islam”

1700-1800 Keynote Lecture 2:

Prof. Konrad Hirschler (Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, University of Hamburg), Reflections on Ottoman library studies – Perspectives and challenges