Review on the first volume of Conversation in the Library – Kütüphanede Muhabbet – Συζητώντας στη Bιβλιοθήκη, ed. Tarık Tüten, İstanbul-Rodos: Tuten Publishing, 2025, cilt 1: 640 s., cilt 2: 484 s.

Öz

This review focuses on the first volume of Conversation in the Library – Kütüphanede muhabbet – Συζητώντας στη Bιβλιοθήκη, a landmark interdisciplinary project centered on the late eighteenth-century Hafız Ahmed Ağa Library in Rhodes. Bringing together the work of more than seventy scholars, the volume reconstructs the history, organisation, and intellectual life of this endowed Ottoman library through narrative, historical, archival, and codicological approaches. Its five sections move from the biographical and institutional background of Hafız Ahmed Ağa to the library’s material and administrative features, before situating it within broader Ottoman, Greek, Jewish, and Armenian traditions of reading, writing, and manuscript culture. While the project as a whole spans the longue-durée history of Rhodes, this review highlights the first volume’s particular contribution to the study of Ottoman book and library culture and its significance for understanding the intellectual landscape of the late Ottoman world.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Ottoman History
• Intellectual Ottoman History
• Book Culture
• History of Libraries
• Greek History

Conversation in the Library – Kütüphanede Muhabbet – Συζητώντας στη Bιβλιοθήκη, ed. Tarık Tüten, İstanbul-Rodos: Tuten Publishing, 2025, cilt 1: 640 s., cilt 2: 484 s. Üzerine Bir Eleştiri

Öz

This review focuses on the first volume of Conversation in the Library – Kütüphanede muhabbet – Συζητώντας στη Bιβλιοθήκη, a landmark interdisciplinary project centered on the late eighteenth-century Hafız Ahmed Ağa Library in Rhodes. Bringing together the work of more than seventy scholars, the volume reconstructs the history, organisation, and intellectual life of this endowed Ottoman library through narrative, historical, archival, and codicological approaches. Its five sections move from the biographical and institutional background of Hafız Ahmed Ağa to the library’s material and administrative features, before situating it within broader Ottoman, Greek, Jewish, and Armenian traditions of reading, writing, and manuscript culture. While the project as a whole spans the longue-durée history of Rhodes, this review highlights the first volume’s particular contribution to the study of Ottoman book and library culture and its significance for understanding the intellectual landscape of the late Ottoman world.

Anahtar Kelimeler

• Ottoman HIstory
• Intellectual Ottoman History
• Book Culture
• History of Libraries
• Greek History