The Collection of Kâtip Çelebi: Cihânnümâ and Kashf al-Zunun

Kâtip Çelebi is a Turkish-Ottoman scientist and intellectual who worked especially on history, geography and bibliography. He is known worldwide for his works Kashf al-Zunun, which introduces nearly 15,000 books including the most valuable works of the Islamic world with nearly 10,000 authors according to the alphabetical index system, and the famous geographical encyclopedia Cihânnümâ. Kâtip Çelebi's Kashf al-Zunun (Kashf al-Zunun 'an Asami al-Kutub wa al-Funun/ The Removal of Doubt from the Names of Books and the Arts) is one of the main works that researchers worldwide having expertise in Islamic studies still benefit from. Also, this work, which is a bibliographic encyclopedia of books and sciences, had a significant impact on the development of the encyclopedia concept in the Ottoman Empire. In addition, he inherited a valuable source for all scientists who lived after him and contributed to the progression of science, which is cumulative and based on cooperation. Cihânnümâ, on the other hand, is considered to be the first systematic geography book of the Ottoman Empire.