The "Bukhara collection" brought by W. A. Ivanov in 1915 to the Asian Museum (nowadays the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences, IOM RAS) contains more than 20 Jewish manuscripts. Nearly all of them are in Judeo-Persian, the language which Carl Salemann, then director of the Museum, was especially interested in. Unfortunately, Salemann did not have enough time to devote his attention to these codexes, and "Ivanov's" Jewish manuscripts almost have not been studied since then. Only texts of these manuscripts were attributed thanks to the personal notes of W.A.Ivanov (during his expedition to Bukhara) and the Hebrew Palaeography Project in the 1990s. Therefore, the main goal of the project is to try and fill the gap and present these Jewish manuscripts to the public.
We will carry out a comprehensive analysis of manuscripts as historical and cultural sources and thus present to the scientific community previously unstudied manuscripts. We intend to result in publishing some of W. A. Ivanov's archive, especially his notes on the monuments he brought, as well as to suggest their potential dating and to give their detailed description. This study may become the basis for a future research of various philological and historical aspects of the life of the Jews of Central Asia, first of all, in the Emirate of Bukhara and the Turkestan General Governorship in the Russian Empire in the 19th - early 20th centuries.
Project leader:
Ekaterina Belkina, PhD student, Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, Russian Academy of Science (St. Petersburg).
We will carry out a comprehensive analysis of manuscripts as historical and cultural sources and thus present to the scientific community previously unstudied manuscripts. We intend to result in publishing some of W. A. Ivanov's archive, especially his notes on the monuments he brought, as well as to suggest their potential dating and to give their detailed description. This study may become the basis for a future research of various philological and historical aspects of the life of the Jews of Central Asia, first of all, in the Emirate of Bukhara and the Turkestan General Governorship in the Russian Empire in the 19th - early 20th centuries.
Project leader:
Ekaterina Belkina, PhD student, Institute of Oriental Manuscripts, Russian Academy of Science (St. Petersburg).