TURKIC MANUSCRIPTS FROM PRIVATE COLLECTIONS OF ALHAJIKENT (KAYAKENT DISTRICT, REPUBLIC OF DAGESTAN)

Abstract

As part of the research project of the RSCF No. 22-18-00295 “Electronic library of Arabographic manuscripts from archival, library, museum and private collections of Russia”, the authors conducted an archeographic expedition in the summer of 2022 to the Kayakent, Akhtynsky and Suleiman-Stalsky districts of the Republic of Dagestan with the aim to identify private and mosque collections of manuscripts and books for their subsequent description and digitization. Two private collections, belonging to K.M. Kamalov and Sh.Yu. Magomedov, were identified in the Kayakent district of Dagestan. They comprise around forty volumes of manuscripts and early printed books, as well as handwritten documents: assembly records, letters, registration of legal transactions, etc. Both collections have a common origin and are fragments of collections belonging to local religious figures: the last pre-revolutionary qadi of the village of Alhajikent, Qadi-Agay and his relatives Abuzar-qadi, local alim of the first half of the 19th century, Abdul Wahab Sheikh and Sheikh Mirza. The part of the collection of Sh.Yu. Magomedov was lost in the 1980s. The content of the collections is mainly represented by works in Arabic in the fields of grammar and stylistics of the Arabic language, Muslim law, dogmatics, occult sciences. Due to the loss of its part, the Sh.Yu. Magomedov’s collection covers the period between 1747-1748 to the first third of the 19th century, while in the collection of Kamalov K.M. there are earlier copies of manuscripts, which, according to paleographic characteristics, can be attributed to the middle of the 17th century. Our paper focuses on the few manuscripts in the Turkic languages, identified in the collections.