KNJIŽEVNA MANUSCRIPTA TURCICA U ARHIVU SANU
TURKISH LITERARY MANUSCRIPTS IN THE ARCHIVES OF THE SERBIAN ACADEMY OF ARTS AND SCIENCES

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to give a survey of all the Turkish literary manuscripts in the Oriental Collection of the Archives of the Serbian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Belgrade. The composition of the literary manuscripts in the collection made it necessary to classify them, before making the survey, into four groups: l. commentaries on classical Persian literature; 2. poetry and belle-lettres; 3. lexicographic works in verse; 4. other Turkish literary manuscripts. The manuscripts fall readily into these categories. The order of the groups of manuscripts reviewed was determined largely by the importance of the individual manuscripts, not from the point of view of their literary value but from that of their archeographic and bibliographic value. In order to make a complete survey of the real value of these manuscripts and in order to make a thorough critical evaluation of the original value of each manuscript separately, the author has, in addition to bibliographic and archeographic - descriptive methods, also used the method of comparing originals with originals kept in other places. More or less all available catalogues of Turkish manuscripts were used for this purpose and for Yugoslav collections of manuscripts printed catalogues, inventories, censuses and often even the source material itself were used. It is obvious that more attention has been devoted to Yugoslav collections because most of the manuscripts reviewed here either came into being on south Slav soil or circulated in this area for a long time which means that they, together with al other oriental manuscripts, acted as a sort of cultural emissary for the south Slav lands. In the processing of individual subject headings (groups of manuscripts) there is a tendency to preserve just one thread in the presentation which binds the separate parts into a unified thematic whole which necessarily means that, in addition to bibliographic, archeographic, textual, Le., above all, factual material, some general literary-historical and theoretical notes which are only partially relevant, have been included. However, not having any illusions about being able to form general literary-historical conclusions on the basis of these sources alone, nor of being able to breathe new significance into an acquaintance with Turkish manuscripts and Turkish literature, the author limits himself to offering as complete a list as possible of reading material of a factual/descriptive nature.

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