The Skyline and ‘Your Library’ of Rhodes
- Debbie Challis
- Apr 21
- 4 min read
The skyline of Rhodes Town has minarets poking out from behind the medieval walls of the Knights of St John. This island has more evidence of Ottoman rule than any other Greek Island or place I have visited, bar, perhaps, Thessaloniki. The Ottomans ruled Thessaloniki and Rhodes until the early 20th century, but while Salonica became Thessaloniki as part of the Greek State, the Italians occupied the Dodecanese after the Italian – Ottoman war of 1912.
Mary Severn Newton, Charles Thomas Newton and Gertrude Jekyll stayed in the former Swedish Consulate in the Old Town of Rhodes in 1863, probably in an area between the fortified Castello and Jewish Quarter in the main Turkish area of the town. Gertrude describes walking around the fortifications and meeting a Bimbashi – a senior military commander – who showed them inside some of the stores. The presence of so many military personnel recorded by Gertrude denotes an imperial occupation: one that had been in place since 1522.
Most of the people Mary and Gertrude drew were Turkish, whether the women they met in the harems (the segregated female spaces of Ottoman houses), merchants or soldiers. An Ottoman census carried out in 1884-6 records a population of 30,000 on Rhodes, with 20,711 Christians, 6,487 Muslims, 2690 Jews and 738 foreigners (Kaurinkoski, 2012). Presumably the population is roughly the same as 20 years previously. The sorting of people by religion is historically linked to the rights accorded to different communities in the Ottoman Empire.
On my first night in Rhodes Old Town, I passed a library opposite the Suleyman Mosque. The library had been opened in 1793, roughly 10 years before my current place of work The Portico Library in Manchester. My children were very much taken with the fluffy black and white cat, who was guarding the entrance. On our last day in Rhodes we all visited the library. A fountain is inscribed to the founder Hafiz Ahmed Aga, who was born in Rhodes and became a senior official in the Ottoman Empire. He established the library for use by those who could read Arabic as well as for classes teaching Muslim Turkish children & adults Arabic. I wondered if the founder was related to ‘the rich Turk Hadji Hafiz’, at whose house Mary and Gertrude joined the women for coffee and drew them in the harem.
Like the Portico Library, this library had a connection to slavery but rather than being funded by the profits of enslaved labour, the founder left money for the rescue and purchase of Muslim people who were enslaved by the Knights of St John on Malta. The Knights made money from selling people or using their labour and took them in raids on North Africa. The Ottoman empire did, of course, have enslaved people but they were not allowed to enslave people who were (already) Muslim.
From the outside, the library is a ripe peach colour and entering the courtyard – full of orange, apricot trees and potted plants – we found it to be an oasis of greenery and calm. The main building houses a cool white study room with a dome, decorated by yellow stars on white with blue sky at the top of the dome. Ottoman maps of Rhodes are displayed on the walls. Behind the glass at the back are the 1256 books of Islamic learning, hand written in Arabic and bound in with gorgeous calligraphy on the covers – they can be seen in the picture gallery of the website.
I bounced up to a friendly PhD student from Istanbul (actually the Center for Manuscript Studies at Fatih Sultan Mehmet Vakıf University) called Elif, who was scoping out the books for study. She explained that the books were unique as most libraries like this had disappeared or their collections had. The project Digital Ottoman Corpora on Ottoman Manuscripts that she is working on is so interesting - sometimes I wish I was a proper academic! We also met the library cat again, who Elif told us is called Miço, a Turkish word (pronounced "Mee-cho") meaning “cabin boy” or “young sailor”. I spotted him with his ears poking above a bookcase but once he realised there may be attention and fuss, he was keen to get out to see us. Elif said every library in Turkey and Greece she had visited has library cats as people who work in them are mad for cats. (My experience too!).
The formation of Turkey as a nation state meant many Muslim Turkish people emigrated in the 1920s onwards. The British governed the island after World War Two until 1947, when Rhodes became part of the Greek State. The conflict in Cyprus in 1974 and various incidents between Greece and Turkey since 1948 have added to further emigration. However, there is still a significant Muslim population, which has been added to by refugees from the Syrian conflict as well as a rise in tourism and foreign residents. Stepping into this library gave me a glimpse of the Ottoman past and it was so good to hear about the study of the books – the original catalogue can be viewed here.
The snow topped mountains of Karia and Lycia in Turkey can be seen clearly across the sea from Rhodes. Looking at the skyline of the Old Town and then out over the sea, the views reminded me that the formation of national boundaries is complex and that people, with their own complex lives, are often caught up by geopolitical tensions. A library, its collection and the people who look after it gave me a glimpse of the past and its statement gives a vision for the future:
‘It is our intention that making a visit to the Hafiz Ahmed Aga Library will prove a worthwhile and memorable experience – in short, we’re making it your library.’
Bibliography
Kira Kaurinkoski (2012), ‘The Muslim Communities in Kos and Rhodes: Reflections on Social Organization and Collective Identities in Contemporary Greece’, SLAVICA HELSINGIENSIA 41 ED. BY JOUKO LINDSTEDT & MAX WAHLSTRÖM, BALKAN ENCOUNTERS – OLD AND NEW IDENTITIES IN SOUTH-EASTERN EUROPE HELSINKI.
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