344 M. A. YEKTA SARAÇ izgi, Cevat; Osmanh Medreselerinde i/ir¡t, (istanbul 199?). izmirli ismail Hak*t, Yeni itm-i Kelam (Haz' Sabri Hizmetli), Ankara, tarihsiz. Kâtip çelebi, Cihannümâ (istanbul, ll45). Katip Çelebi, KeEf et- Zununll (istanbul, 1943). Krnahzade Hasan Çelebi, Tez,kiretü'ç-$uara, c, I (Ankara, 1978). Köprtilü, Fuad; "Aruz" iA, c.l listanbul, 1940). Mecdi, Tercüme-i $ekaytk-t Nu'maníyye, (istanbul, 1269). MANUSCRIPTS AND THEIR FUNCTION IN OTTOMAN CULTURE; Mehmed Celal1' Osmanh Edebíyan Nümuneleri (Dersaâdet, l3l2) Mehmed Mihn; Fenn-i Bedî (istanbul, 1288). THE FATATRI COLLECTION IN THE LEIDEN UNIVERSITY LIBRARY Mehmed Ntlzhet; Mugni'l- Küuaå; (istanbul, 1286). Mehmed Rifat; M ecâmiul- Edeb, (Derseâdet, I 308). Meh med Zihni; el - K av tü' I - C eyy id (istanbu l, I 304). Jan SCHMIDT* Menemenlizade Mehmed Tahir, Osmanh Edebiyan (istanUul, t:tO). Mihalicî Mustafa Efendi; Zübdetü'l- Beyan listanbul, 1297¡. Muallim Nacii Isulahâtt Edebiyye (istanbul, 1307). Recaizade Mahmud Ekrem; Ta'lim-i Edebiyar (istanbul, 1299). Introduction. The Leiden University Library Turkish Collectlon: Acquisition and Reçid; Nazariyatt Edebiyye I-II (istanbul, 1328). the Role of Fate Saçaklrzade, Muhammed b. Ebi Bekir el-Maraçî; Tertibu'l-Ulûm (tahkikli negri. Muhammed ismail es-Seyyid Ahmed) Beyrut, 1988. The Leiden University Library boasts an extensive collection of Oriental manuscripts Saraç, M. A. Yekta; $eyhüIislam Kemal Paçazøde'nin Hayatr, $ahsiyeti ve Eserleri, (istanbul, 1995). and contains more than26,000 separate items; some 6000 of them originated in the Islamic "Tarlanln Edebî Sanatlar'rna Farkh Bir Yaklagrm" ilmî Aragûrmalar 8, (istanbul, 1999) Middle East or are are related to it in some way or another. The value of the collection can Selim Sabit; Mi'yaru'l- Kelôm (istanbul, 1287) hardly be estimated. I do not mean this solely in a financial sense but even more in a spiritual -;Seyyid Mehmed Sîret; Usul-i Kitôbet (istanbul, 1298) one: its documentary value for the history of non-Western literature in the broadest meaning Stileyman P aça; M e bani' l - Ì nç â, I-IJr (istanbul, 1284 - 1289) of the word. This lack of knowledge is also the result of deficient or non-existent cataloguing $afak, Yakup;"Süruri'nin Bahru'l-Maârifi ve Bu Eserdeki Teçbih ve Mecaz Unsurlan" Selçuk Üniversitesi Türkiyat of the collection. It has been expanding for centuries while the ;ystematic description of the Aragtrrmalan Dergisi, sayr:4 (Konya, 1997). contents of the manuscripts has been neglected. Our present curator, Professor Jan Just Süruri'nín Bahru'l-Maârif i ve Enlsü'l-IJgSâk ile Mukayesesí, A.Ü. Sosyal Bilimler Enstitüsü, Doktora tezi, Erzurum, 1991 Witkam, has taken upon himself the task of at least starting to fill this deplorable gap by Taçköpräzade, isameddin Ebil-Hayr Ahmed b. Mustafa; eç-$eka*u'n-Numaniyye fi Ulemai 'd-Devleti'l-Osmaniyye (haz. initiating a number of cataloguing projects. One of these concerns the detailed description of Dr. -; Ahmed Subhi Furat), Istanbul 1985. the Turkish collection for which the author of this article was engaged. This has now resulted Tayyar; Rehber-i GüIístan, (istanbul, 1308). in the publication of a first volume which describes the older sub-collections;l three more Tolasa, Harun; "l8.yy.da Yazrlmrg Bir Divan Edebiyatr Terimleri SözlüSü: Mi.istakimzade'nin Isulahâçr $i'riyyesi": volumes are preparation. TDED cilt 24-25 (Istanbul, 1986). in They will describe the acquisitions made after 1781 and the minor collections Unat, Faik Re¡it; TrIr&þe Eþitim Sisteminin Geligmesine Tarihî Bir Baftr¡ (Ankara 1964). kept in Dutch libraries and museums. Uzunçargrh, ismail Hakkl; Osmanh Devletinin ilmiye Te;kilarr, (Ankara, 1984). The acquisition of the Middle-Eastern manuscripts in the Leiden University Library has Yaltkaya, M. $erefeddin; "Tanzimattan Evvel ve Sonra Medreseler" Tanz.imat I (istanbul, 1945). a long history which goes back to the early 17th century. Surveying the collection in its Yazrcr, Hi.iseyin; 'Hrzrr b. Muhammed el-Amasî ve el-ifâza fi $erh Ünbûbu el-Belaga" i.Ü., SSE, basrlmamrç doktora tezi, Istanbul, 1996. entirety, we could say about its provenance that, besides a great number of, often small, purchases Yetig, Kazrm; "Ceviet Paça'nrn Belâgat-i Osmaniyye'si ve Uyandlrdr$r Akisler", Kubbealtt Mecmuast l2ll (istanbul, from European booksellers like the Leiden firm of E.J. Brill and auctioneers like 1983); l3ll (istanbul, 1983). Sotheby's and Christie's, a relatively great part of it was acquired by gifts, but even more by Talîm-i Edebiyat'm Retorik ve Edebiyat Naz.ariyafi Sahasmda Getirdiþi Yenilikler, (Ankara 199ó). purchases, sometimes through a bookseller or an auctioneer, of private collections owned by, "XV.yy.da yazrlmrç Bir Kavâid-i gi'riyye Risalesi" TDED, c.29, (istanbul 2000) mostly Dutch, scholars; I mention the names of Scaliger, Golius, Warnerus, three generations -; of Schultens, Johannes Heyman, Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje, C. van Arendonk, J.H. -; Leiden University Library I Jan Schmidt, Catalogue of Turkßh Manuscripts in the Library of Leiden University and Other Collections in the Netherlands l. Comprising the Acquisitíons of Turkish Manuscripts in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (Leiden 2000). TUBA 28lI, 2004: 3lr-344 AND THEIR FUNCTION IN OT:IOMAN CULTURE 347 346 JAN SCHMIDT MANUSCRIPTS write chronicles themselves so that gaps in the information available in the West at that Kramers - all Leiden orientalists - as well as the German orientalist Franz Taeschner,2 the be, to history of many Islamic dynasties could be closed. To no avail, for that matter.4 Bosnian scholar Salih Hadjibegovich Alic, and the contemporaneous professors Sj. van time about the Koningsveld and Fred de Jong. The volume of new acquisitions knew a few booming periods: This situation is different in the case of the Fatatri collection. The thematic unity of the middle of the 1.7th century with the large collection of Warnerus, described in the first genre, or at least of related genres, is striking. But this aspect is in the end equally rooted in the volume of my catalogue, and the 1960s and following decades when its growth rose workings of the market and historical chance. What are these genres? exponentially even by comparison with the rich 17th century. The Fatatri collectlon: genre, language and authors Among the important acquisitions of the second half of the 1960s there is the Fatatri collection, the greater part of which has recently been described by Jan Just Witkam in a If we take a closer look at the type of texts represented in the Fatatri manuscripts it lengthy Handlßt, which is available to visitors of the Oriental Reading Room in our library. I appears that the majority of them concern Arabic handbooks or shorter Arabic tracts, often myself have described the Turkish texts in the collection for the yet unpublished second and commentaries on older works, which all in some way or another deal with the traditional third volumes of my catalogue; I could not have accomplished that task without the sciences, and auxiliary sciences, of Islam and its traditions. Thus we find works in the fields of preparatory work by Witkam. A.A. Fatatri was - and is, he is still alive - a trader who was Arabic, and, exceptionally, Persian grammar, lexicography (mostly vocabularies and born and grew up in Egypt but is at present a resident of Leiden. Although I am not aware of (rhymed) dictionaries), poetics and rhetoric; theology (dogma and ethics); Koran further details, he seems to have travelled extensively in the Middle East and particularly in interpretatign and recitation; hadith and'the sunna of the Prophet; logic (a major role here is Turkey while continually buying manuscripts and, sometimes, small private libraries,3 for played by the Arabic translation of the Eisagoge by Porphyry which was considered to be a little money. (He did not deal, by the way, exclusively in manuscripts.) A small number of basic text and endlessly rehashed in commentaries and supercommentaries); and jurisprudence items were not, obviously, bought in Turkey or the Middle East at large; this is certainly the (fiqh, fatwas, manuals for cadis and so forth). An interesting group within the last-mentioned case with the odd manuscript of Indonesian provenance. The Fatatri manuscripts were genre is made up of works concerning hereditary law; some manuscripts consist primarily of acquired by the University Library in seventeen instalments between November 1965 en July multicoloured tables and diagrams which are meant to illustrate often very complicated 1969. (For practical reasons I will not discuss here the smaller lots obtained from him by the (theoretical) problems. Apart from this mostly traditionally religious material, two genres are library between May 1970 and 1995; they often show, for that matter, the same characteristics represented in a minor way: texts concerning the exact sciences: arithmetic, astrology and as the larger acquisitions made in the 1960s.) The items he offered for sale, more than five- astronomy, and medicine; but we are dealing here almost exclusively with texts which hundred manuscripts in all, cost the library on average fifty guilders, a. tenner if they looked represent the traditionally medieval approach of these sciences and are based on (pseudo-) worn and well-thumbed, a hundred to a hundred-and-fifty guilders, sometimes more, if they Classical and Islamic authorities. Thus practical application looms large in the case of were of an unusual large format, were less damaged, or contained more precious paper, or astronomical treatises where prescriptions for establishing the direction of Mecca are the main had, exceptionally, an attractive gold-embossed cover. In a few cases, he did not ask for money topic. Religion is also dominantly present here. Finally, we find texts concerning mysticism with regard to an unsightly and extremely worn and dirty volume. The content of the texts, and the orders of dervishes.