When we trace back the initial element, foundation, origin, or arche of “culture” and “civilization”—regardless of which word we use to express it—we encounter the “book.” In this sense, Tahir Harîmî’s work titled Libraries in the History of Civilization is the history of “man,” “culture,” and “civilization.”

The author of the work, Tahir Harîmî Balcıoğlu (1893-1953), is a name our readers are not yet familiar with. As one of the late Ottoman thinkers, Tahir Harîmî Bey is a scholar who will join our world of culture with quite a delay through the works he left behind. The first of the great works he bequeathed to us, Libraries in the History of Civilization, first published in 1931, is one of the pioneering studies on books and libraries. It expresses, from the perspective of the history of civilization, what libraries—or more accurately, the book and the universe it creates—mean for human history and civilizations, the noble role they have played in the formation of human history, how they built civilizations, and that what raises civilizations on solid foundations is science and the book. Writing an article in Felsefe Yıllığı (Philosophy Annual) after the book was published, Hilmi Ziya Ülken stated that Tahir Harîmî’s work could be called "a history of bookselling in general rather than a history of libraries," and expressed the most original aspect of this work as follows: "Truth be told, since the history of Western bookselling has been studied and many works have been published about it, what could be done in that field would be a mere translation. However, among orientalists, no comprehensive work has been produced on the bookselling of Islamic and Turkish civilizations. Therefore, this particular feature of this book ensures its originality." According to Hilmi Ziya, the most noteworthy aspect of this work is that "it provides information about the study and translation of Eastern works by Europeans," and that it is "of a value that will guide those who will study the history of Turkish and Islamic civilization and the evolution of Turkish culture, and will provide the opportunity to access many important sources."

87 years after its first publication in 1931, it joined the Büyüyenay library as our 250th book in May 2018. Now, it meets our readers again with its revised 2nd edition.