Mustafa İloğlu in his library (Bilinmeyen interview)

The opening page (p. 2593) of Bilinmeyen magazine’s interview with Mustafa İloğlu. In the photograph, İloğlu stands in front of shelves full of books. The photo caption reads: ‘Mustafa İloğlu is seen in front of his library. İloğlu wrote the 9-volume Gizli İlimler Hazinesi drawing on very old books he found in Beirut and Damascus.’

According to the text on the page, İloğlu is 91 at the time of the interview and was born in İzmir in 1896; after primary school he joined the Aydın railways as a traffic clerk at 14, then went into trade; he had been interested in the occult sciences from a young age for about 79 years; he spent 40 years of his life in İzmir and 51 in İstanbul; he states that he receives an average of 20 letters a day from readers and is trying to complete the 9th volume of the work.

Note: the date/place of birth and age given here rest on his own statement in the interview; the museum’s biography section will be updated as this is confirmed by an independent source. This record is one of the period documents showing that the ‘born 1980 in Bursa, living novelist’ information circulating online is incorrect.