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ArcheoBiblioBase: Archives in Russia: H-50

Last update of repository: 17 March 2020

Gosudarstvennyi muzei Vostoka (GMV)


Holdings

Total: 9th–early 20th c.

The museum holds manuscripts in Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and other Oriental languages. They are not arranged in a separate fond, but are kept as exhibits in several regional specialized exhibition fonds. The largest number of manuscripts are found in the Near and Middle East Sector and in the Central Asian Division. Almost all of them are in fact works of art, given their extensive illuminations. On the whole the manuscripts are of literary or theological content. They include anthologies of the works of the Persian poets Arifi, Jami, Nizami (Ganjavi), Rumi, and Sadi, as well as copies of the classical Oriental poems “Laila and Mejnun,” “Kalilah and Dimnah,” and others. Among the theological manuscripts there are fragments of the Koran (folios from the 9th–10th cc.) and copies of prayers (18th–early 19th cc.).
        There is a unique collection of colored Japanese engravings from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as well as albums and picturesque scrolls from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, but most of these would also be considered works of art, rather than archival materials. The Japanese masters represented here include Utamaro, Kuniyoshi, Honkei, Sadamasu, and Yoshikuni.
        Among the examples of Chinese calligraphy there is a unique horizontal sixteenth-century scroll by the painter Chou Ying, known as the “Poem about the Deserted Wife,” and a seventeenth-century scroll “Zou Yuandao” by the painter Yun Shouping.
        The collections also include Indian and Mongolian miniatures in the form of illustrations for manuscript books, and folios of the Persian translation of the “Book of Babur” (Babur-Name).

NB. The description of museum collections is available electronically on the website of museum: http://www.orientmuseum.ru/collections/.


ABB ArcheoBiblioBase Archeo Biblio Base Patricia Kennedy Grimsted