MANUSCRIPT HERITAGE IN THE COLLECTIONS OF THE “AZIRET SULTAN” MUSEUM-RESERVE: TEXTUAL, HISTORICAL-SOURCE AND CULTURAL ANALYSIS

Abstract

This article examines the historical, scholarly, and cultural significance of the written heritage preserved in the National Historical and Cultural Museum-Reserve ‘Aziret Sultan’ in Turkistan. Its aim is to characterize the formation and composition of the museum’s book collection and assess its potential for research on Turkic-Islamic intellectual history. The study draws on the collection descriptions and the manuscript, printed-book, and facsimile examples identified in the article. Source analysis, thematic classification, and selected paleographic and codicological observations are used to distinguish types of material and assess their research value. The collection is described as comprising nearly seven hundred items, including 158 manuscripts and approximately five hundred printed works. The analysis considers Qur’anic studies, Hadith, Islamic theology, jurisprudence, logic, philology, and poetry, with particular attention to a Katta Langar Qur’an facsimile, an edition of Sahih al-Bukhari, a manuscript of Mishkat al-Masabih, and copies of Diwani Hikmet. The findings identify the collection’s interdisciplinary importance while revealing the need to veify individual catalogue data, restore bibliographic consistency, and undertake systematic textual description. The article concludes that preservation must be accompanied by cataloguing, comparative study, and responsible scholarly access.