Written by Christopher Markiewicz (2013)

INtroduction

The Archive and Library of the Topkapi Palace Museum (Topkapi Sarayi Müzesi) contain some of the most important documents and manuscripts pertaining to Ottoman and Islamic history. The Library (TSMK) and Archive (TSMA) are both located on the grounds of Topkapi Palace in the Sultanahmet district of Istanbul.

The library is open Monday through Friday between 9am and 4pm with a one hour break for lunch between 12pm and 1pm.

Location: Google Maps

GOING THERE

The museum is in the very center of Istanbul and easily accessible by tramway. Researchers can disembark at either the Sultanahmet or Gülhane tramway stop and then proceed to the palace on foot. The approach from Sultanahmet is a bit further but is on relatively level ground, whereas the Gülhane approach necessitates a short walk up a hill.

The only difficult aspect of working at the Topkapi library is negotiating the crowds of tourists on the palace grounds. As the palace is one of the most popular tourist sites in Turkey, researchers must contend with the thousands of tourists who enter the palace every day. When entering the palace grounds at the Gate of Salutation (Bab-i Selam), we advise researchers to head straight to the guard booth at the gate and present themselves as a researcher at the library. The guard will ask you to pick up a visitor’s card (ziyaretçi karti) from the guided tours ticket sales booth. With this card, researchers may enter the palace grounds without purchasing a ticket.

GETTING IN

Researchers must obtain permission to conduct research at Topkapi from the Museum Directorate. The research request application consists of a request form, a research statement produced by the researcher which describes his or her research and specifies the material at the archive or library the researcher requests to consult, a letter of affiliation with a research institution, and a photocopy of the researcher’s identification (passport or Turkish national ID card). The research statement should include (1) a description of the current project on which the applicant is working, (2) mention of the purpose of the study (doctoral dissertation, academic article, etc.), (3) enumeration of the specific works or archival materials to be examined, and (4) the contact information and signature of the applicant. These applications are processed within a few days. The museum offers research permission valid for a single calendar year; each January permission must be renewed with a new application.

After obtaining permission, those who wish to work at the library should make an appointment by telephone or in person.

Finding your material

The reading room has a complete copy of Karatay’s seven-volume catalog of the collection. The reading room’s copy of the catalog is more accurate than other copies, as it includes a number of marginal notes and corrections which detail the actual location and state of the library’s collection. In addition to these catalogs, the reading room also has a catalog key which converts the collection shelf mark number to Karatay’s catalog accession number. This catalog key is an extremely useful tool for locating references to manuscripts in Karatay’s catalogs. Aside from these materials, the library has no readily accessible reference material.

COLLECTION OVERVIEW

Archive

The Topkapi Collection is an indispensable source for historians concerned with Ottoman history prior to the nineteenth century. With few exceptions, the archival collection of the Topkapi Palace Museum contains the only extant official records of the Ottoman dynasty for the first two hundred years of its existence.

The archive consists of two classifications of documents: registers (defter), which range from a single sheet to several hundred pages, and loose papers (evrak), which include everything from elaborately produced letters from foreign sovereigns to scribbles on scraps of paper produced by low level palace officials. With approximately 153,000 loose papers and 10,775 registers, TSMA is the largest Ottoman archive after the Ottoman Archives of the Prime Minister’s Office (BOA). Researchers should note that the defters of the palace archive are digitally available at BOA.

In 1937 the museum invited the Hungarian historian and archivist Lajos Fekete to survey the palace archive and make recommendations for the collection’s classification. With his recommendations, the museum staff produced a two volume guide to the collection organized alphabetically according to the subject of the document (usually the document’s creator or addressee). Unfortunately this published guide only covered the archive’s collection up through the letter H. Between 1949 and 1951 M. Çagatay Uluçay described the remainder of the collection in five handwritten notebooks which were kept at the archive for researchers’ use. Beginning in 1957 Ismail Hakki Uzunçarsili and subsequently Sefi Ülkü Altindag produced a catalog of the 153,000 loose papers of the archive on small notecards. These notecards and the published and unpublished guides from the first-half of the twentieth century remain the only resources which describe the full extent of the archive’s collection. Since 2006, the archive has been closed to facilitate a number of changes, foremost of which is the development of a completely new and thorough catalog of the archive’s collections. As of autumn 2013, the Archive under the direction of Sevgi Agca has produced four volumes of a planned fifteen volumes. The volumes have been published and are available at the Archive for consultation.

As the archive of the Ottoman dynasty, the collection provides the best material for researchers concerned with the activities of the royal family, as well as the functioning of the palace and central state administration. The loose papers include all manner of official documents including edicts (ferman), titles of investiture (berat), reports (arıza), and petitions (arzuhal). The majority of the registers include finance records such as salary registers of palace officials, inventories of the Imperial Treasury, and surveys of religious endowments (evkaf) established by one of the royal family members.

Although the majority of the documents are in Ottoman Turkish, the collection also includes a fair amount of material produced in other languages. This is particularly true for the earlier periods in which much of the state correspondence was composed in Persian. The collection even includes an example of an extremely rare edict (yarlig) in Uyghur-script Eastern Turkish (Chaghatay) composed by order of Sultan Mehmed II in the aftermath of the Ottoman victory over the Aqquyunlu confederation at the Battle of Otlukbeli in 1473.

While the vast majority of the archive’s collection consists of documents produced by the Ottoman state, the archive also includes an exceptionally important collection of documents produced by other Muslim dynasties. The majority of these documents were produced in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries by Iranian dynasties such as the Timurids, the Qaraqoyunlu, the Aqqoyunlu, and the Safavids. In all likelihood these ‘foreign’ archival documents arrived in Istanbul with other spoils of war in the wake of one of the victorious Ottoman campaigns waged against the Aqqoyunlu or Safavid polities.

Library 

The collection of the palace library contains approximately 13,400 manuscripts. The majority of these manuscripts are in Arabic (approximately 8,500), although the library has a sizable collection of manuscripts in Turkish (3,081 including works in Chaghatay and Kipchak), and Persian (904). While the library is not even the largest collection in Istanbul, its holdings are distinguished by many rare and, in some cases, unique manuscripts, including many early copies of important works and a number of autographed manuscripts. Beginning in 1961, Fehmi Edhem Karatay produced a seven-volume catalog of the library’s Arabic, Persian, and Turkish collections organized according to the language and literary genre of each work. In addition to works in these languages, the library also has a sizable uncataloged collection of material in European languages. For those interested in the Greek, Latin, Armenian, and Syriac holdings of the library, we suggest consulting D. Adolf Deissmann’s Forschungen und Funde im Serai(Berlin-Leipzig, 1933).

The majority of the library’s collection consists of works related to Islamic religious sciences along with many works of history, grammar, poetry, belles lettres, and other sciences. Its Arabic works are distinguished by a large number of early copies of the Quran, including a few which were reportedly copied by ‘Uthman bin ‘Affan and ‘Ali bin Abi Talib. The library’s Turkish works include a large number of histories of the Ottoman dynasty, many of which are preserved solely through the library’s copy.

While the library is certainly of great importance to historians and scholars of Islamic studies, the library’s significant collection of finely produced volumes and illustrated manuscripts mark it as one of the great libraries in the world for art historians. Most of the volumes with miniatures were produced in the palace painters’ atelier (nakkaşhane) or in Iran and subsequently acquired by the dynasty. In addition to the illustrated volumes, the library also has an important collection of calligraphy (hat) and other art forms.

Ordering your material

Researchers request manuscripts from the library staff by submitting a short request form. Generally the staff make requested manuscripts available within ten minutes of a request. Researchers are asked to wear gloves while examining any of the library’s manuscripts.

Ordering scans

Researchers working in the library may request digital reproductions of material upon submission of a short request form. In general, if these requests are for non-commercial scholarly use, they are quickly approved within one or two days. Reproductions of non-illustrated pages cost 2 TL for foreigners per photographic exposure and half as much for Turkish nationals. Reproductions of illustrated material cost more.

Digital reproductions of archival material may be obtained in a similar manner. As with the library, these reproductions also cost 2 TL per photographic exposure. As the archive is currently closed, researchers must know the defter or evrak reference number of their documents in order for their requests to be processed. After researchers have obtained research authorization, they may request reproductions remotely. Once the museum receives payment via bank transfer, the staff will mail copies of the requested material on CD.

Food and well-being

Topkapı’s library is a pleasant place to work. The library’s reading room is located in the anteroom of the former Agalar Camii. The room consists of two large tables at which researchers may examine manuscripts. The reading room has sufficient natural light for reading and is enclosed on four side by walls of beautifully decorated seventeenth-century Iznik tiles.

The staff of the library and archive are quite friendly and willing to help. Some of the staff speak English, so researchers without Turkish should be able to manage.

There are few options for food on the grounds of the palace. Konyalı is the only restaurant on the grounds of the palace. It has a beautiful terrace with views of the Bosphorus, but meals here are relatively expensive. Researchers may find many options for lunch outside of the palace, but they will need to re-enter the palace grounds—and contend with the masses of tourists—when they return. We recommend packing a lunch and finding a bench to eat in one of the palace’s gardens.

Originally published on Hazine