Turkish Printed Divans Found in the Egyptian National Library

Throughout the Ottoman era and before that, the Turks conquered Egypt. There are many works of Turkish Literature in Egypt. Around five thousand Turkish manuscript works exist in just the Egyptian National Library. There are Turkish works in other libraries in Egypt too. The first work on manuscripts in Egypt was made by Ali Hilmi Dağıstanî in 1889. Egyptian National Library was rearranged in 1950. And after this date, systematic studies were made about Turkish manuscripts. These studies were made by a team where Prof. İhsan Abdülaziz and Prof. Dr. Nasrullah Mübeşşir were the heads of the team. It is important that these works are known in Turkey. There are many printed works that were published before and counts could be stated as thousands can be found in Egypt. These works were intensely brought together in Darü’l Kütûbü’l-Kavmiyye (Egyptian National Library). A grand majority of these works were printed in Boulaq printing house in Cairo. Kavalali Mehmet Ali Pasha and state governors that are descendants of him valued the manuscripts and print works very much in Egypt. Besides the Kavalali Mehmet Ali Pasha family, the other state governors who were working with them also valued the books. The manuscripts and printed works are being protected in the Egyptian National Library which is a modern library. Printed works and manuscripts are majorly found in this library. There are also other libraries than this library where Turkish printed works and manuscripts could be found. But this library is the library that the works are the majority. Catalog studies were made about the manuscripts and print works in this library. Undoubtedly, divans are the most important works of classical Turkish literature. These divans’ manuscript copies exist in the library. Likewise, the printed copies of the divans also exist. The importance of the printed divans that are found in the Egyptian National Library is high by the Turcology studies. In this study, Turkish printed divans will be introduced. The shelf numbers of the Turkish divans were also given in this introduction.

Keywords

Turkish Literature, Classical Literature, Cairo, The Egyptian National Library, Turkish Print Divans