Рукописи и ксилографы на восточных языках в научной библиотеке им. М. Горького СПбГУ

168 Ŷ SUMMARY The collection of manuscripts written in Arabic script in different languages kept at the St. Petersburg University Library includes 1452 items. These books were as- sembled throughout the nineteenth century from different sources. The collection of manuscripts in the Arabic language comprises some 600 volumes on philosophy, history, philology, poetry, prose, folklore, geography, astronomy, medicine, as well as manuscript copies of the Q’uran, works on Islamic law, hadith collections and Christian literature. This collection is very valuable because it contains a number of very rare and even unique manuscripts including several autographs. Noteworthy is an anthology compiled by an Egyptian official and scholar Ibn Mammati (d. 1209 AD) which, along with his own writings, contains poetic quotations from other authors. Its unique manuscript (Ms. O. 744) dates back to the thirteenth-fourteenth centuries. Of utmost importance is an autograph dated 1606 of an unprecedented dictionary of Egyptian Arabic ‘live’ vernacular (Ms. O. 778) by a Cairo resident Yusuf al-Magribi (d. 1611 AD). This work provides a vast material on the lexicon of the Egyptian dialect of the past, as well as materials on Arabic folklore. The St. Peters- burg University Library possesses several other valuable indigenous Arabic lexi- cographical works. The ‘mathematical’ part of the collection includes eight manuscripts, one of which is a valuable source for the history of mathematics. It is a treatise based on the “Conics” (parts III and IV) by Apollonius of Perga (III–II cc. B.C.) written by the three Banu Musa brothers, Baghdad scholars of the 9 th century (Ms. O. 185). The St. Peters- burg manuscript is considered one of the oldest among the extant copies, since it is traced back to the eleventh century. Also available are works on other sciences, among them a collection of treatises on alchemy dated 1223 AD (Ms. O. 662). Moreover, the Library also possesses the very first lithograph book in Arabic printed in Lebanon in 1853 (Ms. O. 1234). The first manuscripts in Arabic, Persian , Turkish and Tatar were transferred to the St. Petersburg University Library from the Oriental Chamber of the Asiatic Mu- seum in 1819. In accordance with the imperial decree dated 22 October, 1854, the collections of books and manuscripts in Asian languages hitherto kept at the Kazan University, the Kazan First Gymnasium and the Lycée Richelieu in Odessa had to be relocated to St Petersburg. Since that time the collection was enriched by new acqui-

RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzQwMDk=