Benedek Péri is the director of the Institute of Oriental Studies and the head of the Department of Turkic Studies at Eötvös Loránd University, Budapest. His research interests include various aspects of the history of classical literary traditions (Persian, Chaghatay, Ottoman and Türkī-yi ʿAjamī) with a special focus on the 15th–16th century, the history of Turkic languages and literatures on the Indian subcontinent and the history of drug consumption in the Persianate cosmopolis. He published extensively on the phenomenon of imitation in classical Turkic/Turkish ghazal poetry and has finished a book on the topic that awaits publication. Dr. Péri’s latest publications include an edition of the Budapest manuscript of Ḥaydar Ḫvārizmī’s Gulšan al-asrār, a Chaghatay texts from the early 15th century and a critical edition of the Persian dīvān of Sultan Selim I (r. 1512–1520).

The Hafiz Ahmed Agha Library is an exceptional institution that has represented continuity since the 18th century, serving as a bridge between the modern world and the Ottoman past. It is a great honour for me to take part in the preparation of a volume whose aim is to create awareness of this little-known yet unparalleled collection. Tarık Tüten’s honorable invitation— which was a tremendous gift for me—arrived at a moment when I happened to be reading The Bosnian Chronicle, the unparalleled and sweeping novel by the Bosnian author Ivo Andrić, set around the time of the founding of the Hafiz Ahmed Agha Library. The opportunity to immerse myself simultaneously in a literary work depicting life in a small Ottoman town and in the manuscript holdings of a bibliophile provincial Ottoman intellectual’s library brought the twilight of the Ottoman Empire closer to me, turning it into a more personal and tangible experience. Just like Andrić’s protagonists, the Hafiz Ahmed Agha Library now connects two worlds in its own way—and perhaps the writer’s words are just as fitting for this institution, which recalls the Ottoman past of Rhodes: “No one truly knows what it means to be born and live on the edge of two worlds—to come to know and understand both, yet be powerless to bring them closer or make them explain one another; to love and hate both in equal measure; to waver and hesitate for a lifetime; to live in two countries without belonging to either; to feel at home everywhere, yet remain a stranger forever.”

Benedek Péri