John Robert Barnes is a scholar of Ottoman and Near Eastern history. He holds a BA in Arts from Stanford University, an MA in History from New York University, and a PhD in History from the University of California, Los Angeles. Dr. Barnes’ research spans the historical and legal development of religious foundations in Islam and the Ottoman Empire, the origins of Turkish Sufism, and Bektashi and Alevi rituals. His work also explores the history of Ottoman Rhodes, nineteenth-century Ottoman intellectuals on the island, the tekke and cemetery of Murad Reis, Ottoman epigraphy in the cemeteries of Murad Reis and Gani Ahmed, and the classificatory headings and catalogues of the Hafız Ahmed Ağa Library. He has published extensively on Ottoman history, including his landmark book, An Introduction to Religious Foundations in the Ottoman Empire (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1986); “Murad Reis Tekkesi (Rodos),” in Ahmet Yaşar Ocak, ed., Osmanlı Toplumunda Tasavvuf ve Sufiler, 2nd ed. (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Yayınları, 2014), pp. 375–408 [1st ed. 2005]; “Some Cases of Mistaken Identity in the Ottoman Epigraphy of Murad Reis on Rhodes,” in σοφία άδολος: Studies in Honor of Ioannis Papachristodoulou (Archaeological Institute of Aegean Studies, Rhodes, 2014), pp. 233–57; and ‘Σχόλια γύρω από την ιστορία του Καστελλορίζου με αφορμή την Οθωμανική Ιστορία της Νήσου Μέις του Xαμπιμπζαντέ Αχμέντ Κεμάλ’ [Comments on the History of Kastellorizo in Light of A History of the Island of Meis by Habibzade Ahmed Kemal], Δωδεκανησιακά Χρονικά, vol. 23 (Rhodes, 2010), pp. 62–84.

“My association with the Hafız Ahmed Ağa Library began in 1997, when Elias Kollias, then director of the Ephorate of Antiquities, invited me to translate its original catalogue from Ottoman Turkish into English. At the time, Dr. Kollias imagined that the task would require no more than a month. Were he alive today, he would, I suspect, be surprised—if not appaled—to learn that the project has now extended over three decades. The reasons for this protracted endeavor lie in the nature of the original catalogue itself. Abbreviations are frequently used for the names of authors and titles of works, but these are of little help in securely identifying either. Moreover, the catalogue provides no account of the twenty-five classificatory headings, most of them being Islamic sciences, into which the library’s holdings are divided, nor does it offer biographical information on the scholars whose works defined the sciences. It soon became clear that the project could not remain a mere inventory of books. Rather, it had to evolve into a broader undertaking: a historical survey of the Islamic sciences, a biographical study of their authors, and a contextual discussion of the Prophet Muhammad, the Kur’ān, and the formative period of Islam. In this light, an almost thirty-year effort for what was once thought to be a one-month task is perhaps not as implausible as it may seem. The British historian Arnold Toynbee confronted a similar experience: what began as a modest set of notes eventually grew into his monumental ‘A Study of History’, a multi-volume work that took him three decades to complete and expanded into nothing less than a history of the world. At the close of my own study of the library, I was fortunate enough to be introduced to Tarık Tüten, the representative (mütevelli vekili) of the administrator (mütevelli) of the library’s pious foundation. Tarık has been an unfailing source of patience and support, particularly as I have contended with a debilitating illness. His encouragement has extended well beyond friendship: he has been an ardent advocate of my research on the library and on the history of Ottoman Rhodes, and he has shown himself to be a first-rate scholar through his involvement in the field of Ottoman studies and in the publication of this volume.”

John Robert Barnes