Arabic, Persian and Turkic Manuscripts from Hajji-Tarkhan (Astrakhan)

Abstract

In his paper Ilya Zaytsev gives a paleographic description of eight Arabic, Persian and Turkic manuscripts originating from Astrakhan in the very end of the eighteenth through the mid-nineteenth centuries. Their repertoire falls in line with other areas in Muslim borderlands of Europe as it concerns division of religious and secular disciplines, and language usage. The Arabic language dominates in Qur'anic and other religious sciences, Farsi prevails in works of a wide thematic range from ethics to epistolary genre, while Turkic is used in secular poetry and history. Thematically Astrakhan's collections seemed to be closer to those of Kazan.