Rare oriental manuscripts

The collection of the Kokand State Museum-Reserve includes 84 manuscripts, which were brought to the museum between the 1950s and 2018.

Most of them were obtained during archaeological expeditions, in which the museum‘s researchers took part. Some of the manuscripts were presented to the museum by people. All of them are written in different languages such as Arabic, Persian and Turkic – Uzbek and Azerbaijani.

There are 40 manuscripts in Arabic. Four of them are the lists of the Holy Koran. There are also lists of hadiths (legends about the Prophet Muhammad), sharfs and the works of famous thinkers, such as the famous commentary on the Koran titled “Kashshaf” by Mahmud Zamahshari, “Al-Hidaya” by Burhanaddin Marghinani and “Muhtasar al-Vikaya” by Ubaydallah ibn Masud, all dedicated to Muslim law. Some of the manuscripts are on the Arabic grammar, such as “Kafiya” by Ibn Hajib and “Fawaid al-ziyaiya” by Abdarrahman Jami (“Sharhi mumo Jami”). This category also includes the work “Akaid al-Nasafi” by Najmiddin Umar Nasafi explaining the Muslim religion.

The manuscripts in Uzbek and Azerbaijani (24 items) are the second most numerous in the collection. These include two manuscripts by Ahmad Yassavi, three lists of Alisher Navoi‘s diwans, two lists of Fuzuli‘s diwans and one list of Mashrab‘s poems. 24 manuscripts are in Persian, mostly fiction works. These include diwans by Hafiz Shirazi and Mirza Abdulkadir Bedil (1644 – 1721), “Jome al-muhammasot” (Collection of Muhammases), “Dostoni Mahmud i Ayoz” and a collection of Sufi ghazals. Works on Sharia, such as “Chahor Kitab”, “Muhimmot al-Muslimin” and “Durr-al ajayib” (The Wonderful Necklace) are dedicated to wisdom and morality. A collection of religious and moral works, “Awwal-i ilm” (The Beginning of Knowledge), as well as “Nurnoma”, “Shamoilnoma”, a translation of “Tanbeh al-gofilin” from Arabic to Persian and a translation of a work following the logic of “Tahzib” are of special interest. The manuscripts “Majma‘al-Garaib” and “Zahirat-al-Muluk” (Treasury of Kings) on the rules of state administration deserve special attention.

The preservation of these manuscripts, rewritten at different times, is not the same. Nevertheless, every one of them is highly valuable, demonstrating our ancestors‘ academic and artistic way of thinking.