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compendium of the knowledge and literature of 10th century Islam, the Book
Catalogue (Kitab al-Fibrist). The nature of libraries and the usage of books are
generally similar among the different cultural groups, which is why we can make
assumptions about the 15th century. As the Arabic knowledge appearing in West¬
ern-Europe was different in the period after the 13th century, just like looking at
the history of libraries it is also not surprising that we cannot mechanically deal
with similar (Western Christian and Muslim) phenomenons. For instance, if we
look for Greek or other Eastern Christian or even Latin codices in the catalogue
of Bayezid II we shall be disappointed. This does not mean that the library was
not meant to be encyclopaedic, nor that these books did not exist in the palace,
but that the inventory was only concerned with the inner library, the one within
the chambers of the Sultan. The collection itself is a worthy peer to the more
western, compared to Istanbul, contemporary bibliothecas. The libraries of Pope
Sixtus V, the Dukes of Burgundy, or Lorenzo de Medici can be compared to the
library of Mátyás Hunyadi which is definitely more significant than the libraries
of the English king Henry VII or French kings Louis XI or Charles VIII; just
a few examples of contemporary or almost contemporary bibliophile sovereigns.
In terms of content the library of Sultan Bayezid II had encyclopaedic features.
It had Quran interpretations, theology, juridic and law schools, philosophy, logic,
and separately ethics and correlated to it, happier times, when there had been a
correlation, political theory.
‘There were even works dealing with the education of monarchs (a kind of mir¬
rors for princes). Obviously, there was a great number of medical texts, including
medicinal plants for every day use and works about well-known healing practices.
Furthermore, there were the scientific descriptions of flora and fauna, the applied
segments of these disciplines, in other words, books on farming and agriculture;
however, texts on occultism were not missing either. A substantial collection of
literary fiction could be found as well (Turkish, Persian, and Arab). Beyond just
the introduction of nature, the natural sciences are also represented along with
astronomy, geography, as well as applied disciplines like arithmetic, geometry,
optics, and various devices.
Unfortunately, the catalogue of the Bibliotheca Corvina has not yet been dis¬
covered. In fact, scholars have not even been able to agree on what a corvina is.
At present, hardly 215 certified corvinas are recognised in fifty different libraries
around the world, at least according to the authors of the latest chapters on re¬
search history (Csaba Csapodi and his wife, Klara Gardonyi). They worked with
the corvinas during an era when only few had the opportunity to travel. It can be
considered a thankless job to work on a project where the principle sources, the
codices and manuscripts, are almost all abroad. We know this is not the reason,
but instead book historical considerations led them to narrow the concept of the
corvina to those codices which bear any marks of ownership (mainly their coats
of arms) of King Matthias or his wife, Beatrice of Naples. Even in the case of
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