Abstract:

The foundation date of the British Library (The National Library of England) dates back to the 1750s. The library which had previously served in the British Museum was separated from the British Museum through a legal regulation and was brought to an independent structure under the name British Library. The British Library officially opened by the Queen in the year of 1998 contains over 150 million documents. The British Library is regarded as the world's second largest library in terms of books and other contents. The building of The British Library is located in the immediate vicinity of the St. Pancras-Kings Cross station which is considered to be the meeting point of national and international train services in central London. There are not any catalogs in the British Library prepared for Turkish manuscripts and containing all Turkish manuscripts in the library as of today. The catalogs and brochures in Turkish manuscripts prepared in 1888 and 1958 are not enough for today's researchers. The British Library has a wide variety of Turkish manuscripts. It is possible to find a great number of manuscripts written in the language of Gokturk, Old Uyghur Turkic, the area of Karahanlı-Harezm-Kipchak representing the East Turkic, and Azerbaijan Turkic, Old Anatolian Turkish, Ottoman Turkish and Turkish Turkish representing Western-Oghuz Turkic from Chagatay Turkic. Apart from these, the British Library has treatises in almost all Turkish dialects (Bashkurt, Uzbek, Tatar, Kazakh, Kirghiz, Chuvash, etc.). In this study the Turkish manuscripts in the British Library are outlined. By presenting the history of the library, it was aimed to follow the navigation and the exploration of current Turkish manuscripts. The Turkish manuscripts are roughly classified according to their own era; some examples from the manuscripts of the relevant period were presented. The catalog and brochure studies about the Turkish manuscripts are also included in the notes on how to obtain the Turkish manuscripts in the library. The works were also classified in terms of their contents. The British Library which has around 4000 Turkish manuscripts written in various fields such as ottoman poetries, journals, a collection of biographies, decrees, history books, literature, music, astronomy, interpretation, Koran has been attracting researchers’ attention.

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