Oriental Studies (Apr 2018)
History of the Arabic Christian Manuscripts Collection of Gregory IV of Antioch: a Review of Unpublished Materials from the Archives of Orientalists at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the RAS
Abstract
The article provides an overview of documents in the Archives of Orientalists at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences that contain important information about the history of the manuscripts collection of Gregory IV of Antioch (Haddad) in the early 20th century. The collection of Arabic Christian manuscripts was gifted by Gregory IV to the Russian Emperor Nicholas II during the former’s visit to Saint Petersburg on the occasion of the Romanov Tercentenary. Entering His Majesty’s personal library at the Winter Palace, the collection immediately caught the attention of researchers. One of the first scholars to be granted access to it was the future academician I. Yu. Krachkovsky. He soon created a short catalogue of the collection which was published in 1927 in the 2nd volume of the Bulletin of the Caucasian Historical-Archaeological Institute in Tifl is. It has hitherto been assumed that only Krachkovsky’s early draft has survived which is stored at the St. Petersburg branch of the Archive of the Russian Academy of Sciences. However, the author of the article has been able to discover unknown drafts by Krachkovsky in the Archives of Orientalists at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts. The notes dating from 1919 allow for the conclusion that Krachkovsky had completed at least two draft versions of the catalogue of the manuscripts of Patriarch of Antioch. Moreover, we can confi rm that it was precisely this 1919 draft which served the basis for the 1927 publication since the earlier drafts were located then in Leiden with the Slavicist Nicolaas van Wijk, with whom Krachkovsky had left them together with other luggage when he had had to leave for St. Petersburg in a hurry. Krachkovsky was forced to cut short his study trip to Europe because of the outbreak of WWI. In 1919, he continued his work on the catalogue of the manuscripts collection of the Patriarch of Antioch, whose collection had by then already been moved from the Winter Palace to the Asiatic Museum. Unfortunately, Nicolaas van Wijk was unable to send the drafts to Krachkovsky in time, so that the latter had to begin the work on the catalogue from zero. Using the example of Krachkovsky’s description of a 12th century Greek lectionary manuscript, the article attempts a comparative analysis of fragments of the 1914 and 1919 drafts. The paper proofs that the basis for the short descriptive catalogue of Gregory IV’s manuscripts collection published in 1927 was the previously unknown 1919 draft. Furthermore, the paper reviews previously unpublished materials from the Archives of Orientalists at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences, which are linked to Gregory IV’s collection of Arabic Christian manuscripts, such as a copy of the list 3 NATIONAL HISTORY of manuscripts that was compiled upon their transfer to the Asiatic Museum in 1919, and information about the offi cial accounts of the activities of the Asiatic Museum and others.
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