Sami Arslan is an Ottoman historian specializing in manuscript-book culture, codicology, and the circulation of knowledge in the early modern Islamic world. His research focuses on the transmission and reproduction of scholarly texts during the Ottoman period, with particular attention to the role of manuscript copying in disseminating knowledge. He examines the places where manuscripts were written, copied, and preserved, as well as the authors, copiers, owners, and readers involved in these processes. Sami Arslan studied history at Istanbul University and obtained his PhD at FSMVÜ with a dissertation on how manuscript copying enhanced the production and circulation of knowledge during the era of the İznik and Süleymaniye madrasas. Dr. Arslan teaches Ottoman paleography, Ottoman Turkish, Ottoman culture, and manuscript studies at the Department of History at FSMVÜ. He is also the director of the FSM Center for Manuscript Studies, where he leads national and international collaborations on manuscript research. Under his leadership, the Center organizes workshops, publishes books, and has launched Yazmabilim: Journal for Manuscript Studies, the first thematic, peer-reviewed, biannual academic journal in Turkey dedicated to manuscript and book culture studies.

“I first encountered the Rhodes manuscripts through my elder in the craft, Ali b. Ahmed, who, originally from Homs, was in Rhodes between 22 May and 29 December 1551. During this time, he copied a mecmua containing twelve works. As I leafed through its pages, I began to hear sighs — ah u enin — rising from every corner. I leaned closer, and realized they came from Ali b. Ahmed himself: in the margins and between the lines, he had woven, stitch by stitch, his own story into the istinsah records.

At times in a raised voice, at times in silence, he gave expression to his outrage over the injustice he had endured. He believed he had been sent to the island through a plot, and his heart ached for his homeland, Homs. He wished only to return. To beautiful Rhodes he bestowed a sorrowful name — dâru’l-firâk, ‘the land of partings.’ In his istinsah notes, his loved ones pass before us in solemn procession: his father, his grandfather, his grandfather’s father, his wife, his children, his friends, his allies, and even those he despised.

It was this deep, human tenderness that led me to gaze more closely — and with greater ardor — at those sections of manuscripts once dismissed as mere hurde, the marginal traces, the manuscript’s so-called odds and ends. And so, across five centuries, I offer my thanks to my master and pray for mercy upon him. Whether he was ever reunited with his children, his wife, and his beloveds, we cannot know — but I hope that now they dwell together in some corner of paradise.

I am grateful for my encounter and engagement with this Rhodian mecmua of Ali b. Ahmed, grateful that these manuscripts still endure, and grateful for the good souls who guard them…”

Sami Arslan