WRITTEN MONUMENTS OF THE ORIENT

During the archaeographical fieldwork in August 2024 in the village of Bezhta (Republic of Dagestan), the collection of the Dagestani scholar, the naib of the Caucasian Imamate Sultanmuhammad al-Bezhti, was explored, described and digitized. Sultanmuhammad al-Bezhti, also known as Sultan-dibir, was a founder of an entire dynasty of scholars and public and political figures (among them are his sons, Kebedmuhammad and Abdulmazhid). The collection consists of classical works by Arab-Muslim authors, which were available in every Dagestan private manuscript library. However, each of these manuscripts contains a lot of important and valuable information that expands our understanding of the history and culture of this region. These include numerous glosses found in the margins, between the lines, on the flyleaf, and on the first and last pages of the manuscripts. The last page of the manuscript turns into a family chronicle, which fixes important events from the lives of relatives. Most often, copiists or manuscript owners preferred to leave such notes on the colophon page.

Nikolai Fedorovich Katanov (1862–1922), a Russian scholar of Turkic origin (Khakas), was a valuable Orientalist who wrote important works in the field of Russian Oriental studies. The framework of his scientific work was formed by various fields such as linguistics, ethnography, folklore, culture, history, archaeology and museology related to various Turkic tribes and peoples living in Siberia and Central Asia at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th c. His works made a great contribution to the development of studies on the ethnography and culture of Turkic peoples in Siberia and Central Asia. Further research, study, classification, promotion and publication of the material cultural heritage consisting of unpublished archival and visual materials of Katanov, an exemplary representative of the Khakass people and Turkic-speaking peoples of Eurasia, remains important today. Currently, the personal museum funds and collections of Katanov are stored in Kazan, St. Petersburg, Abakan, Minusinsk and Askiz. In this study, a brief review and description of the Katanov’s collections, which are preserved in the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences in St. Petersburg, but which are little known today, will be made. These collections were collected by Katanov during his scientific expeditions to Siberia and East Turkestan2 between 1889 and 1892 in the Minusinsk region, Uryanhai region and East Turkestan. These collections, exhibited at the Kunstkamera, are published for the first time. In the future, an overview and catalog of N. F. Katanov’s Buddhist museum collections (sculpture, painting and ritual objects) will be presented at the National Museum of the Republic of Tatarstan, the State Museum of Fine Arts of the Republic of Tatarstan and the Ethnographic Museum of Kazan Federal University.

Armenian polemical literature with Muslims from the early modern Ottoman context is very scarce. Unlike in Safavid Persia, public debates were not encouraged in the Ottoman Empire. Official polemical treatises from the Armenian milieu are lacking; little has survived in the historiographies, neo-martyrological accounts, and poetry about how Miaphysite (non-Chalcedonian) Apostolic Armenians positioned themselves within the cohabitation system of Ottoman society. Even less has survived in Armenian sources about popular Muslim religious practices. Therefore, a brief account of this matter provided by the 17th c. Armenian Constantinopolitan historiographer Eremia Kʻēōmiwrchean acquires great importance. The present article aims to explore the information provided by Eremia on popular Muslim religious practices, not only because it is a rare material preserved in the Armenian sources but, most importantly, because it reveals the topics of religious debates between Christians and Ottoman Muslims in everyday life.

Merits of Jerusalem (Fada’il al-Quds), which belong to the genre of Islamic sacred geography, constitute a valuable but still under-researched source for studying the memory of the Crusades in the Levant and Egypt after the expulsion of the Crusaders from the Holy Land. Analysis of the most popular works of this genre created after 1291 shows that in the subsequent centuries the theme of the Crusades and the violation of the Islamic sacred spaces by the Franks played an increasingly important role in treatises of this type. In the works from the late 15th c., a comprehensive narrative of the Frankish invasion was established, centered around the struggle for Jerusalem and the figure of Ṣalāḥ al-Dīn, while contemporary Islamic historiography had not yet developed a comprehensive history of the conflict with the Franks at that point. The works of the period under review also blame the Franks for interrupting the transmission of Islamic knowledge.

This article examines the first volume of Roshia Ibun 魯西亜異聞 [Unusual Narrative about Russia], a unique handwritten manuscript which depicts the story of a Japanese guard, Torizō. He was one of four Japanese guards who spent the winter of 1806 on the Sakhalin island monitoring the situation at Kushunkotan settlement. Lieutenant Nikolai Aleksandrovich Khvostov visited this settlement during his first expedition to Sakhalin in 1806. In his logbook he gave it an interesting name “Lyubopytstvo”, which can be translated into English as “Curiosity”. Curiously enough, this was the place where Khvostov and the four Japanese guards met for the first time. It is considered to be the first military clash between the countries and a turning point of Russian-Japanese relations, since Russia subsequently began to be perceived as a dangerous enemy. The first volume of the source gives especially valuable information about these events. It provides a detailed description of the voyage of the four Japanese captives to Kamchatka on board of a Russian ship, contains important information about the events during the second expedition of Khvostov and Davidov to Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in 1807 and relates the trip of the four Japanese guards back to Japan. The first volume of Roshia Ibun, which has never been translated into Russian nor published yet, gives us answers to the following questions. Who was the guard Torizō? How did he perceive the meeting with the Russians in 1806? Were there any official messages or demands from Russian officers? How did Torizō manage to get back to Japan and did he have a chance to share his story with anyone else along the way?

Volumes from 15 to 20 of Heishuicheng Manuscripts Collected in Russia selectively represent the Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra in Tangut language held by the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The fundamental edition of the Collection certainly is not free from some invalidities, which became evident with the time. For the Tangut version of Mahāprajñāpāramitā-sūtra, (1) some folios of different volumes were mistakenly spliced together; (2) the order of the folios of the same volumes were mixed up. The problem of identifying of the text was also aggravated by omissions made by the Tangut people, who copied the text of Sūtra. This paper suggests some new readings and identifications in the Tangut version of Mahāprajñāpāramitā- sūtra.

The article introduces three previously unknown fragments of 17th c. Mongolian Kanjur manuscripts. While the original folios have been lost, their texts are preserved in handwritten copies produced in the 19th c. by an unidentified German scholar. These copies became known in 2021 after being admitted to the Manuscript Department of the Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences. This article focuses on the Mongolian text of the fragments, its identification, and a brief commentary on the trustworthiness of the handwritten copies.

This article introduces several handwritten materials in Japanese from the personal archive of O. O. Rosenberg (1888–1919) now kept at the Archive of Orientalists, IOM, RAS. These handwritten texts reveal new details about O. O. Rosenberg’s interaction with Japanese Buddhist scholars and publishers before and after the publication of his two dictionaries in 1916 in Japan. In addition to academic activities, O. O. Rosenberg had to deal with financial and legal matters, maintained contacts with printing company staff, discussed various diplomatic procedures. He also had a wide network of contacts in Japan, including other foreigners. Relying on this network and his fluent knowledge of Japanese, handwritten Japanese in particular, O. O. Rosenberg was able to complete his publication projects successfully. This study presents O. O. Rosenberg’s dictionaries as an important component of the project led by Th. I. Stcherbatsky to restore the terminology of Sanskrit philosophical treatises. Future work plans outlined by the young scholar demonstrate his exceptional diligence and competence in matters of Oriental philology. All documents, translated from Japanese by A. Lushchenko, are published for the first time.

The paper offers a survey of the Kalmuck and Mongol typography developed in St. Petersburg under supervision of Isaak Jakob Schmidt, Europe’s first expert on Kalmuck and translator of the Bible into this language. This work was practically, executed by Friedrich Gass, a designer, in St. Petersburg, probably advised by the engineer, Orientalist and printing expert Schilling von Canstadt. The actual printing was arranged by Nikolaj Grech, printer, bookseller, author, whose biography was translated by Maximilian Heine, brother of the poet Heinrich Heine. Two anonymous booklets on life in St. Petersburg were identified as M. Heine’s work by means of a dedication which led to Therese Heine — a cousin of the Heine brothers, to whom Heinrich addressed his probably best known love poem “You are like a flower”.

The article traces the formation and development of the Northern Studies Collection at the Hokkaido University Library, the largest collection of Japanese written sources on the history of Sakhalin and the Kuril Islands in the 17th–19th cc. in Japan and beyond. This region was involved in trade relations with Japanese merchants under the control of the Matsumae clan, and later was partly administered by the Tokugawa shogunate. The Northern Studies Collection of the Hokkaido University Library is based on written sources that were collected and copied nationwide for the compilation of an official history of Hokkaido under the auspices of the island’s governorship in the 1910s–1930s. During the preparation of the catalog in the 1970s and 1980s, the collection was also enriched with copies of many sources from other collections in Japan. Thus, the Northern Studies Collection can be used to reconstruct a map of all the centers for storing sources on the history of the region in Japan. As this extensive collection is closely related to the history of the Northern Studies Collection Department and its predecessor, the Northern Cultures Research Department of the Hokkaido University, the history of these two branches is also traced in the article.

This article examines the use of the analytical form -p bar- as a means to express aspectual meanings and the conditions for its use. In the Old Uyghur language, which is considered one of the early stages of development of Turkic languages, morphological means are used to clarify the nature of actions. One of these means is the analytical form -p bar-. In studies on the Old Turkic and Old Uyghur languages, the use of the analytical form -p bar- to express the aspectual meaning of punctual action has not been previously noted. From this point of view, functional characteristics of this form’s use are investigated in the study. Analyzed examples serve as evidence that the Old Uyghur language had grammar means of expressing the aspectual meaning of punctual action.

The article explores the impact of the Nadir Shah’s Indian campaign on the region of Kashmir in the 18th c., according to the Persian-language manuscript written by Muhammad ‘Azam Didamari. The manuscript provides unique insights into how Nadir Shah’s actions affected Kashmir, including the appointment of a new subahdar and a rebellion of the local population. Contrary to a popular belief, the author suggests that after the campaign the Mughal Empire retained control over Kashmir, highlighting the complex relations between Iran and the Mughal Empire. The study calls for a reevaluation of historical accounts of Nadir Shah’s campaign and emphasizes the need for further research of the role of Kashmir in this significant event. The information presented in the work of Muhammad ‘Azam encourages researchers to reconsider the history of Nadir Shah’s Indian campaign in order to more accurately determine the boundaries between the Mughal Empire and Iran after this event. The mention of Kashmir in the context of these events adds particular value to the study, since other sources on Nadir Shah and his military campaigns either do not mention Kashmir at all or only briefly touch on the region. In this context, the presence of this plot in the work of Muhammad ‘Azam is unique and calls for further research and analysis.