THE COLLECTION OF OTTOMAN TURKISH MANUSCRIPTS OF THE MATENADARAN AND THE DESCRIPTION METHODOLOGY

Abstract

The Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts “Matenadaran” is one of the richest manuscript depositories of the world. It holds 20,310 unities in different languages (Old Armenian, Ottoman Turkish with Armenian letters, Georgian, Latin, Greek, Hebrew, French, Syriac, Hindu etc.). A valuable part of them is the Collection of Islamic manuscripts which consist of 2,715 codices in Arabic, Persian and Ottoman Turkish. The total number of Ottoman Turkish manuscripts is 400. The first descriptions of Islamic Manuscripts of Matenadaran Collection consist of twenty-three manuscript registers. Previously, these manuscript registers were entitled List of Manuscripts in Arabic - Persian - Uzbek - Azerbaijani (فهرست كتب و دستخط عربى و فارسى و اوزبكى و آزربايجانى); later the title was concretized as List of Manuscripts in Arabic Script. The first cataloguer’s name is Hovhannes Ghukasyan, and the date of the cataloguing is 1948. This information is written in the margine of the title-page of the first manuscript register (در سنهً ١٩۶۸ ميلادىاز طرف اوهانس خوقسیان منظوم شد). If the name of the first cataloguer and the date of the work beginning are mentioned, nevertheless, there is no mention in the next registers about the other cataloguers and the chronological course of the work and its conclusion. Subsequently, to achieve our task of creating a new and exhaustive catalogue of the Matenadaran Ottoman Turkish manuscripts. First of all we started the review of the available manuscripts in order to get general and particular notions about them, appreciate the efforts made previously with the aim of choose and utilize everything useful.