The Süleymaniye Complex, which also houses the library, was built by the chief architect at the royal court, Mimar Sinan for Sultan Süleyman the Magnificent, and was completed in 1549-1557. This complex with its health-related elements and library, contributed to the development and progress of science.

Süleymaniye Manuscript Library was founded as a modern library in 1918. The Süleymaniye has now five affiliate libraries: Atıf Efendi Library, Hacı Selim Ağa Library, Köprülü Library, Nuruosmaniye Library, and Ragıp Paşa Library. It is one of the richest centers in the field of oriental studies as it contains the largest collection of Islamic manuscripts in the world. The library houses nearly 131,000 works, including manuscripts in Ottoman Turkish, Arabic and Persian, printed materials in Ottoman Turkish and modern Turkish, English, French, German and other languages.

The Library has very specialized services including microfilm service, digitization department, restoration and research center. Microfilm Service has been set up in 1950. Since then starting with damaged manuscripts and substantially unique ones with calligraphy, illumination, miniatures were archived on microfilms. 5000 manuscripts are now available in this microfilm archive.

Manuscripts and Rare Books Restoration and Research Center is an important section of the library. This Center, where worm-eaten or worn-out books are repaired, was originally founded in 1956 as Binding and Pathology Service. The Center occasionally offers courses on classical binding, book restoration and marbling.

In 2003, with sponsorship of EVYAP Family, technological infrastructure was developed and digitization project was started for manuscripts and printed materials with Arabic letter. So far 65,000 books have been digitized.

Süleymaniye Manuscript Library is known to be the only library in the world that is accommodating the manuscript copies of all the survived works of Ibn Sina who was a great physician, scientist and a philosopher. Some of them are dated as far back as 11th century.