?
TURKISH LITERATURE AND FOLKLORE IN MANUSCRIPTS OF THE COLLECTION OF THE YALTA HISTORICAL AND LITERARY MUSEUM
The article deals with the collection of arabographic manuscripts, litographs and old-printed books of the Yalta Historical and Literary Museum. It contains about 200 items and was primarily formed by the manuscripts which were brought to the Oriental Museum in Yalta in course of archeographic and ethnographic expeditions of the 1920s to the Tatar villages of the Crimean southern coast. The Oriental Museum was established in Yalta in 1921 and existed until 1930. One of the main goals of the Museum was to preserve the traditional culture of the Muslims of Crimea, especially the Crimean Tatars. The expeditions carried out by the Museum under supervision of Yakup Kemal (1887–1938), the director of the Museum. He held this position till March 1929. In 1930, the Oriental museum was merged with the Yalta Museum of Local Lore – later the Yalta Historical and Literary Museum. It is considered that the closure and disbandment of the Oriental Museum in Yalta led to the liquidation of its funds and archives, but the collection of its manuscripts (and also litographs and old-printed books) in Turkic, Arabic and Persian languages was preserved and later was found in the funds of the Yalta Historical and Literary Museum. Some of those manuscripts were attributed and described in accordance with the established in Russian oriental codycology scheme of description of arabographic manuscripts. The collection includes copies of the Koran, manuals on Arabic and Persian languages, dictionaries, treatises on Sufism. Most of the collection consists of manuscripts in Ottoman Turkish language on various branches of Islamic theology and law, as well as treatises on astronomy and medicine. Only a few works of literature can be distinguished among Turkic manuscripts of this collection (these are various destans, poetical divans, didactical treatises).