Millet Kutuphanesi

The Millet Library is home to an unbelievable collection of Ottoman manuscripts and documents. Many of them contain miniature paintings, amazing calligraphy, gold leaf, and beautiful illumination. I went there Wednesday and met the board of directors, who showed me some absolutely stunning examples from their archives.

These are Divans, poetry collections from the Ottoman empire, written in Nesih/Naskh or Taaliq/Faarisi calligraphy of the Ottoman Turkish language.

This is the archive. There are 31,000 volumes of hand-written books, 12,000 of which have been digitized. This is an unbelievable step towards the digitization of Ottoman libraries.

~ by Josh on November 26, 2008.