TREASURES OF KNOWLEDGE

The first part of this two-volume publication is devoted to a catalogue of manuscripts in the imperial library of the Ottoman sultans which was commissioned by Sultan Bayezid II, a noted bibliophile. At the time, the library housed about 7,000 volumes having 5,000 separate titles, making it the largest collection in the empire and perhaps larger than any in western Europe. The second volume contains a critical edition, in facsimile and transliteration, of the manuscript containing the catalogue of the Ottoman imperial library, preserved as MS. Török F. 59 in the Oriental Collection of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Budapest.