Zolotoordynskoe Obozrenie (Sep 2016)
Current State and Prospects of Studying Sources on the History of Crimean Khanate in Turkish Archives »
Abstract
Research objectives: to consider the current state of the study of sources on the history of the Crimean Khanate in Turkish archives and determine the prospects for the study of this issue. Research materials: works of domestic and foreign Orientalists in the study of the Crimean sources in Turkish archives. Results and novelty of the research: the author analyzed the current state of the study of sources on the history of the Crimean Khanate in Turkish archives. The works of such prominent scholars as A. Bennigsen, Ö. Gokbilgin, A.N. Kurat, Ch. Lemercier-Quelquejay, V.D. Smirnov and others deserve the most attention. Sophisticated paleography (age and conditions of documents) of the Ottoman sources and difficulties with their translation were the main reason for their insufficient use. In their studies, Orientalists presents facsimiles of the originals of letters and their translations, give the transcript values of complex or controversial words, solve problems with the translation of dates into the modern chronology and also produce a detailed external criticism of documents: they describe their length, quality of the paper, handwriting and also decode the khans’ seals. This enables modern researchers to get acquainted with some of the earliest sources on the history of the Crimean Khanate. The author has revealed a number of new challenges that need to be addressed in the further study of sources on the history of the Crimean Khanate: translation of foreign Orientalists’ works into Russian as well as synthesis and integration of predecessors’ works, since each individual work does not cover all the documents of interest to modern scholars. The study of sources on the history of the Crimean Khanate remains a promising challenge for modern researchers, since in Turkish archives are stored unpublished documents waiting for their turn to enter into scholarly circulation.
