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Showing posts with label Research Institutions. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Research Institutions. Show all posts

Sunday, April 22, 2007

The Turkish Studies Department of Leiden University

Turkish Studies

The Turkish Studies Department of Leiden University is one of the largest research and teaching departments in its field in Europe. It has a permanent staff of six, one of whom is permanently stationed in Istanbul and eight additional staff members with non-tenured positions. It offers BA,MA, M.Phil and PhD degrees.The department maintains links with the Turkish academic and intellectual world, resulting in a constant inflow of Turkish MA and PhD students. The Department offers a MA programme in European Studies jointly with Istanbul Bilgi University, and a MA programme in Turkish Studies with Sabancı University in Istanbul. These programmes are taught partly in Istanbul and partly in Leiden. The teaching is enhanced with regular guest lectures by professors from other universities from the Netherlands and abroad. The department of Turkish Studies combines expertise in the languages of the region with historically oriented research programmes. The department has strong national and international links, in particular with the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, London), the EHESS (Paris), the International Institute of Social History, (IISH, Amsterdam), and Bilgi and Sabancı Universities (Istanbul).

The Turkology Update Leiden Project (TULP) is a unique initiative of Leiden University’s Department of Turkish Languages and Cultures (until recently part of the Department of Languages and Cultures of the Islamic Middle East) and Projectgroup Computer Supported Education (COO). It started December 1997 and its first results were published on the World Wide Web by April 1998. The TULP-pages are continually updated and expanded; so watch out for News. TULP will provide a specifically Turkological introduction to the Web for Leiden University’s students of Turkology as well as for the general public interested in aspects of Turkey and Central Asia.

TULP’s main pages feature A Curricular WebGuide for Turkology, A Topical WebGuide for Turkology and Interactive Turkish Texts (in Dutch).

The Turkology Update Leiden Project(TULP)

TULP’s Database of Interactive Turkish Texts was developed as a tool for students, combining easily accessible vocabulary and idiom lists with the department’s grammar specialist D. Koopman’s grammatical and syntactical comments and references to his and Dr. Geoffrey Lewis’ Turkish grammar. In April 1998 -when TULP first went online- it consisted of three texts, but new ones will continually be added. It will be used in six of the department’s courses (Modern Turkish Grammar, Grammatical Text Analysis, Sentence Structure 1, Sentence Structure 2, Conversation A and Conversation B). The database is only of use to speakers of Dutch and requires a Java-capable browser.

Photography/ Text © http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/tcimo/tulp/topical.htm

JOC provides access to these materials for educational and research purposes and makes no warranty with regard to their use for other purposes. The written permission of the copyright owners and/or holders of other rights (such as publicity and/or privacy rights) is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use of protected items beyond that allowed by fair use or other statutory exemption. JOC has made every reasonable effort to locate and acknowledge copyright owners and wishes to be informed by any copyright owners who are not properly identified and acknowledged on this website so that we may make any necessary corrections.

Harvard University - Ottoman and Turkish Studies

History of Ottoman and Turkish Studies at Harvard University

Harvard University has a long tradition of teaching and research in the fields of Turkish and Ottoman studies. As early as the nineteenth century, courses on Ottoman history were taught at the University. However, during the past three decades, Turkish and Ottoman studies have been expanded and integrated more thoroughly into the curriculum. The program has grown stronger most recently with the addition of area studies faculty and the enhancement of the Turkish language program. These developments have resulted in greater student interest and the establishment of new research projects.

Faculty and Curriculum Resources

Harvard has been fortunate to have a history of excellence in teaching and research in Turkish and Ottoman related disciplines. Most notably, during the early part of this century, the prominent diplomatic historian, Archibald Coolidge, came to Harvard where he taught Ottoman history for many years. In particular, he left to Harvard and future scholars his valuable collection of European books on the Ottomans, including a large number of books published before 1700. Under his supervision, Albert Howe Lybyer published a book in 1913 on Süleyman the Magnificent; the book’s basic premise is still discussed among historians and is called the “Lybyer thesis.” During the 1930s, two well-known Harvard professors, William Langer and R.P. Blake, continued the tradition of teaching Ottoman history at Harvard and published a celebrated article on the rise of the Ottomans which is still considered a classic piece of scholarship.

After World War II, Turkish and Ottoman studies burgeoned at Harvard under the guidance of numerous scholars and professors. Sir Hamilton Gibb, the famous Islamist, came to Harvard in 1955; he was the co-author with Harold Bowen of a major work on the history of the Ottoman Empire during the eighteenth century. He was joined by Stanford Shaw several years later, who taught Ottoman history, language, and paleography. During the early 1960s, Turkish language studies was boosted by the addition of Zekiye Eglar and Omeljan Pritsak to the faculty. Eglar taught modern Turkish, and Pritsak taught ancient, as well as modern, Turkish along with the comparative grammar of Turkic languages. Another important appointment in the area of language studies was Sinasi Tekin in 1965. Initially he taught modern Turkish but subsequently has expanded his offerings to include Ottoman paleography and several textual studies. After Pritsak retired, Tekin took over the teaching of several Turkic languages, including Old Uyghur, Kokturk, and Uzbek. Dr. Tekin also for years has been editing and publishing the Journal of Turkish Studies., one of the most important western journals in the field of Turkish studies

Turkish and Ottoman studies expanded into other disciplines at the University with several important appointments during the 1960s and 1970s. Among these were: Annemarie Schimmel, who taught courses on Turkish literature, including Mysticism, Mevlana, and Yunus Emre; and Nur Yalman, whose specialty is Middle Eastern social anthropology. In the 1980s, Tosun Aricanli joined the faculty and taught courses on the economy and social history of the Ottoman empire and Republican Turkey. Subsequently, Gülru Necipoglu, an art historian working on the history of Ottoman art and architecture, was appointed professor in the Fine Arts Department.

In 1997, a generous grant by the Koc family of Turkey made it possible to establish the first endowed professorship at Harvard, and one of the very few in the USA, devoted to Turkish studies.

Today, Harvard continues to attract eminent scholars and teachers in a wide range of disciplines related to Turkish and Ottoman studies. The most important recent development was the appointment of Cemal Kafadar, a member of the History Department since 1990, as the Vehbi Koç Professor of Turkish Studies in 1998. Professor Kafadar has reintroduced regular courses in Ottoman history at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Also, in recent years, the directors of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), Professors Roy Mottahedeh, Edward Keenan, William Graham and Roger Owen have been emphasizing the central position of Ottoman studies in a complete and balanced program of Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies. Harvard’s resources in Turkish Studies now cover a wide range of disciplines, including those already mentioned, and the following: Turkic linguistics and language; Muscovite-Tatar relations and Tatar diplomacy; sociology of Turkish immigrants in Europe; and medical anthropology relating to this region.

With support from the Mellon Foundation, Harvard has taken the lead in creating innovative programs for teaching Turkish in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations. For example, Engin Sezer has developed the draft of an elementary text book for Turkish, which is used by his first-year classes. Other projects in progress include a graded exercise book, a booklet of Turkish poems arranged in order of increasing grammatical complexity with a glossary, audio-visual materials, and collections of selected readings for upper-intermediate and advanced-level courses. Professor Sinasi Tekin has also developed a summer school for Ottoman language instruction in Ayvalik, Turkey. In addition, Wheeler Thackston, a professor of Persian, also offers a course on Chagatay prose at Harvard.

The Islamic Legal Studies Program (ILSP), established at the Harvard Law School in 1991, offers courses in the fields of Islamic law and the laws of Muslim countries. The Program, directed by Professor Frank E. Vogel, sponsors a number of research fellows annually and undertakes speaker series, conferences and research projects involving faculty, fellows and students. Its courses are open by cross-registration to students from throughout the University. While the Program does not offer any specialized degree or certificate in Islamic law, it assists students wishing to concentrate their studies in Islamic law and related fields to achieve their goals through coursework. The Program works closely with other parts of the University, and welcomes the participation of students and scholars from throughout the University and the local academic community.

A measure of the progress of Turkish studies at Harvard since Albert Howe Lybyer wrote his famous doctoral dissertation on Süleyman the Magnificent in 1909 is the number of graduate students now following in his footsteps and concentrating in these fields. During the past few years, the number of Ph.D. candidates researching Ottoman and Turkish history, art and culture has increased, and fully a third of the graduate students entering the M.A. program in regional studies at CMES focus on the area as well. In addition, a number of graduate students in other parts of the University who have an unofficial affiliation with the Center are also studying Turkish language, culture, and history. Equally important is the steady increase in undergraduate enrollments in Turkish language and area studies courses (including enrollments of over 100 in one of Professor Necipoglu’s courses)-a sure sign that Turkish Studies is becoming a more significant component of Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard.

Research and Art Collections

Turkish and Ottoman art and manuscripts figure prominently in the collections of the Harvard Art Museums and the Harvard University Libraries. Harvard’s small but magnificent collection of Islamic and later Indian art is housed at the Arthur M. Sackler Museum. It comprises a broad range of works, from Samanid pottery and Mamluk calligraphy to Qajar lacquers and Ottoman textiles. The Harvard Art Museums are fortunate to hold part of the Edwin Binney III collection, the largest private collection of Ottoman/Turkish art in North America. (The remainder of the collection is housed at the Los Angeles County Museum of Arts.) Included in the collection at the Sackler Museum are works from the fifteenth through the nineteenth centuries: miniature paintings and calligraphies; portraits of Ottoman sultans; an illuminated ferman (decree); illustrations from Persian classics; elaborately decorated book-bindings and illustrated manuscripts; and Ottoman textiles (pieces of cut velvet and colored embroidery), metalwork, and ceramics (brilliantly-colored tiles and dishes). The collection is displayed in thematically-oriented exhibitions in the Islamic Gallery on the second floor of the Sackler Museum. For further information about the Department of Islamic and Later Indian Art, please call (617) 495-3345.

The Harvard College Library, particularly the Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library, also has a large collection of books and manuscripts in Ottoman and Turkish languages, ancient and modern, and related subjects. Specifically, the Library holds 23,000 books in Turkish and Ottoman Turkish, 8,000 in the languages of Inner Asia, primarily Turkic languages, and over 3,500 books about Inner Asia. Because many divisions of the Library acquire and catalog books about Turkey in English and other languages, their number is more difficult to estimate. The Harvard Map Collection holds 91 maps of Turkey, and Houghton Library has 37 Ottoman Turkish manuscripts. Another media resource includes 59 videos in Turkish held in the Widener Library. In total, Harvard’s collection of Turkish-language materials is one of the largest in the United States. The collection is searchable online through the Harvard OnLine Library Information System (HOLLIS Plus), which also offers access to other online research tools.

One book fund in particular, the Goelet Fund for Turkish and Central Asian Collections, has been in used by the Middle Eastern Division of Harvard College Library since 1991 to acquire books from Turkey, the republics of formerly Soviet Central Asia, and the Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region of China. The books are primarily in Turkish, Uzbek, Kirghiz, Kazakh, Uighur, and Kurdish; a few are in Russian and Western European languages.

Photography/ Text © http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~turkish/about_turkish_studies.html

JOC provides access to these materials for educational and research purposes and makes no warranty with regard to their use for other purposes. The written permission of the copyright owners and/or holders of other rights (such as publicity and/or privacy rights) is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use of protected items beyond that allowed by fair use or other statutory exemption. JOC has made every reasonable effort to locate and acknowledge copyright owners and wishes to be informed by any copyright owners who are not properly identified and acknowledged on this website so that we may make any necessary corrections.

University of Washington - OTAP

OTAP is a cooperative international project employing computer technology and the resources of the World Wide Web to make transcribed Ottoman texts and resources for understanding Ottoman texts broadly accessible to international audiences.

OTAP is jointly sponsored by the University of Washington in Seattle and Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey under the direction of Professor Walter G. Andrews (U.W.) and Professor Mehmed Kalpaklı (Bilkent). The project has been supported by the Center for Advanced Research and Technology in the Arts and Humanities at the University of Washington, the Halil İnalcık Center for Ottoman Studies at Bilkent University, the Institute of Turkish Studies, and the University of Washington Royalty Research Fund. OTAP has an Advisory Board made up of 8 renown international scholars and an outstanding group of 6 experienced technical consultants. Our growing group of participating scholars now numbers over fifty and includes members from the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and North America.

The core task of OTAP is the Web publication of transcribed Ottoman texts in searchable, analyzable form but the project also acts as a resource and umbrella for several related projects.

The Ottoman Historical Dictionary (OHD) is an electronic, on-line historical dictionary of the Ottoman language. It is still in the planning stages under the direction of an experienced and highly-regarded lexicographer, Prof. Semih Tezcan of Bamberg University in Germany. The dictionary will use Archive materials and materials collected for Prof. Tezcan’s Old Anatolian Turkish project to create a dictionary containing historically accurate definitions supported by examples on the general model of the Oxford English Dictionary. No comparable resource exists for Ottoman Turkish.

The Bio-bibliographical Database of Ottoman Literature (BIDOL) is an encyclopedia providing information about Ottoman authors and their works. Prof. Gottfried Hagen of the University of Michigan is in the process of developing the database structure for this project, which will encompass and expand upon the metadata core of the Archive. It will eventually provide a unmatched resource for information about knowledge production in the Ottoman Empire.

The Critical Texts Group headed by Prof. Mustafa İsen of Başkent University in Ankara, Turkey, this group is conducting a survey of Ottoman manuscripts (of which there are approximately 600,000 in Turkish libraries and many thousands in Europe and the U.S.) in order to create a prioritized list of manuscripts to be transcribed and edited for publication in the Archive. No similar list exists today.

Contacts

Walter Andrews
Near Eastern Languages and Civilization
Box 353120
229 Denny Hall
University of Washington
Seattle, Washington 98195
walter@u.washington.edu
http://faculty.washington.edu/walter


Photography/ Text © http://courses.washington.edu/otap/otap_en/index.shtml

JOC provides access to these materials for educational and research purposes and makes no warranty with regard to their use for other purposes. The written permission of the copyright owners and/or holders of other rights (such as publicity and/or privacy rights) is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use of protected items beyond that allowed by fair use or other statutory exemption. JOC has made every reasonable effort to locate and acknowledge copyright owners and wishes to be informed by any copyright owners who are not properly identified and acknowledged on this website so that we may make any necessary corrections.

Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation London

Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation was established in London in 1988 by the Yamani Cultural and Charitable Foundation. It is housed in a historic Jacobean manor: Eagle House. The Foundation has as its aim the documentation and preservation of the Islamic written heritage. It is pursuing this aim principally through its work in surveying, cataloguing, editing and publishing Islamic manuscripts.

Islamic manuscripts are estimated to number three million, covering subjects as diverse as the Quran, Prophetic traditions, jurisprudence, logic and philosophy, as well as mathematics, botany, biology, poetry and literature, and art and crafts. Nowadays these manuscripts are not the exclusive preserve of Arab and other Muslim countries, or even of countries with large Muslim minorities. Manuscripts are found extensively in Europe, the Americas, Japan, Australia and Africa. There is hardly a country that does not possess some manuscripts produced under the aegis of the Muslim civilisation.

This large and important resource is, tragically, in great danger of being damaged or even lost forever. Political conflict, social upheaval or merely natural causes - whenever and wherever there is a lack of resources essential for its maintenance and preservation, this heritage is in danger.

Al-Furqan Foundation is committed to mobilising every available expertise to preserve these manuscripts and to restore their content to the cultural mainstream.

The Library

The Library was founded by HE Sheikh Ahmed Zaki Yamani in 1991.

The Collection

The Library is intended to serve students of the Islamic heritage, and specifically those undertaking research into Islamic Manuscripts. It houses approximately 14,000 volumes: a rich collection of bibliographies, Arab and Muslim biographies, catalogues of manuscript collections in some 90 countries and a diverse collection of books in Islamic studies, philosophy, science, history, art and Sufism as well as Arabic language and literature.The Library subscribes to 20 specialist periodicals

Manuscript Holdings

Although the Library does not collect manuscripts, it holds microfilms and CD-ROMs for some thousands of manuscripts in the Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Bosnian and Indonesian languages.

Al-Furqan Islamic Heritage Foundation
Eagle House, High Street, Wimbledon
London SW19 5EF
Email: info@al-furqan.com
Tel: +44 20 8944 1233
Fax: +44 20 8944 1633


Photograph/ Text ©http://www.al-furqan.com/

JOC provides access to these materials for educational and research purposes and makes no warranty with regard to their use for other purposes. The written permission of the copyright owners and/or holders of other rights (such as publicity and/or privacy rights) is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use of protected items beyond that allowed by fair use or other statutory exemption. JOC has made every reasonable effort to locate and acknowledge copyright owners and wishes to be informed by any copyright owners who are not properly identified and acknowledged on this website so that we may make any necessary corrections.

Tarih Vakfi - The History Foundation Istanbul

The History Foundation is a non-governmental organization working in the public interest with the objective of developing and extending history consciousness in Turkey. It aims at enriching and lending a new content to the way in which people regard history and at encouraging the conservation of the historical heritage with a deep-rooted sensitivity and active participation of wide sections of the population.

The Economic and Social History Foundation of Turkey is an organization based on the joint initiative of a group of intellectuals of various backgrounds and professions, most of them being historians and social scientists. It was founded by 264 prominent intellectuals in September 1991 followinga call by the Foundation Initiative Committee formed in late 1990.

The History Foundation differs from the great majority of foundations in Turkey in the manner of its establishment and structure. It is a non-governmental organization completely independent of the state and is not backed by any political party, wealthy family or business group. Its initial capital was made of small contributions by its founders. Today, in addition to the revenues from various projects and publications, the History Foundation continues to depend on the generous support of its founders and members.

The History Foundation provides library, archival and bibliographical services through its Information-Documentation Centre (IDC) open daily from 10:00 - 17:00, which specializes in the field of history of the economic and social structure of Turkey and the Ottoman Empire in the 19th and 20th centuries. The centre located at Eminönü, Istanbul, was sponsored by the Municipality of Greater Istanbul, IBM-Turkey; Yapi Merkezi and Zeytinoglu Holding at the initial stages, and by EGSBank in 1999.

The Centre houses one of the richest archives on economic and social history and the daily life of the alte period of the Ottoman Republic as well as the Turkish Republic. Having over 25,000 books and more than 1,300 periodicals, it is open to researchers every weekday. Its holdings also include 20,000 slides, photographs, maps and posters, 1,200 documentary films and video tapes, 130 audio tapes, 700 audio cassettes, hundreds of iconographic materials and 140 shelf-meters of files of documents. Among this archive, the largest book collections have been donated by Necmeddin Sahir Silan, Faik Resit Unat, Sami Nabi Özerdim, Orhan Tuna, Marmara Belediyeler ve Bogazlar Birligi, Ilhami Soysal, Ertugrul Kayihan-Vecdi Seyhun, Arslan Kaynardag, Volkan Ünal, Samet Agaoglu, Ayse Erzan, Hulusi Dosdogru, Talat Halman, Fatma Rezzan Hürmen, Saban Yildiz and Bedi Yazici.

Postal adress:
Tarih Vakfi - History Foundation
Barbaros Bulvari Yildiz Sarayi Arabacilar Dairesi
34349 Besiktas - Istanbul/Turkey
Phone : +90 212 227 37 33 - 227 37 34
Fax : +90 212 227 37 32
E-mail : tarihvakfi@tarihvakfi.org.tr
www.tarihvakfi.org.tr

THE INFORMATION DOCUMENTATION CENTER
Zindankapı Değirmen Sokak No:15
Eminönü - İstanbul/ Turkey
Phone: + 90 (0) 212 513 52 35
Faks: + 90 (0) 212 513 21 77
email: tarihvakfi@tarihvakfi.org.tr
www.tarihvakfi.org.tr

Get direction: Location Map

Text © Tarih Vakfi

JOC provides access to these materials for educational and research purposes and makes no warranty with regard to their use for other purposes.The written permission of the copyright owners and/or holders of other rights (such as publicity and/or privacy rights) is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use of protected items beyond that allowed by fair use or other statutory exemption.

Friday, April 20, 2007

The Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul

The Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul (SRII) is a Turkey-based Swedish multidisciplinary research institute founded in 1962. The SRII is one of four Swedish institutes in the Mediterranean region. The other three are located in Rome (founded in 1925), in Athens (founded in 1948), and in Alexandria (founded in 2000). The aim of the SRII is to further research on an academic level in Turkey and in the Near East, particularly in the following fields of study: Oriental literature and and linguistics, Near Eastern history, archaeology and art history, Classical and Byzantine studies, as well as other disciplines within the humanities and social sciences. The activities of the SRII include annual scholarships, lectures, seminars, conferences,exhibitions and scholarly publications.

Visiting address:

The Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul
Istiklal Caddesi 497
Tünel, Istanbul/Turkey

Get Direction: Location Map

Postal address:
P.K. 125 Beyoglu
TR-344 33 Istanbul/Turkey
Tel. +90 212 252 41 19
Fax. +90 212 249 79 67
E-mail: cecilia.jansson@sri.org.tr
http://www.srii.org/index.htm

Stockholm office:

Skeppargatan 8
SE-114 52 STOCKHOLM
Tel. +46 8 662 75 70
Fax. +46 8 665 31 33
E-mail: sfii@swipnet.se

Text/Photograph © The Swedish Research Institute in Istanbul

JOC provides access to these materials for educational and research purposes and makes no warranty with regard to their use for other purposes.The written permission of the copyright owners and/or holders of other rights (such as publicity and/or privacy rights) is required for distribution, reproduction, or other use of protected items beyond that allowed by fair use or other statutory exemption.

Friday, April 06, 2007

Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts

Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts (Turkish: Mimar Sinan Güzel Sanatlar Üniversitesi) is a Turkish state university dedicated to the higher education of fine arts. It is located in the Fındıklı neighborhood of İstanbul, Turkey. It was founded on January 1, 1882 as the "School of Fine Arts" ("Mekteb-i Sanayi-i Nefise-i Şâhâne" or simply "Sanayi-i Nefise Mektebi") by the renowned Turkish painter Osman Hamdi Bey, who was also an art historian, archeologist and museum curator. The institution, being the first of its kind in Turkey, took up education in fine arts and architecture on March 2, 1883 with 8 instructors and 20 students.

In 1914, the school became co-educational. The school was converted in 1928 to an academy, the first academy in Turkey, and its name was changed to "Academy of Fine Arts" (Güzel Sanatlar Akademisi). In 1969, it was renamed to "Istanbul State Academy of Fine Arts" (İstanbul Devlet Güzel Sanatlar Akademisi). On July 20, 1982, its status was changed, and the academy became a university named "Mimar Sinan University" (Mimar Sinan Üniversitesi) after the great Ottoman architect Sinan. Finally, in December 2003, the administration of the university changed its name to "Mimar Sinan University of Fine Arts".

Academic units

Faculty of natural sciences and literature (archeology, paedagogy, physics, statistics, mathematics, history of art, sociology, history, Turkish philology and literature)

Faculty of fine arts (photography, traditional Turkish handicrafts, graphic design, sculpture, painting, stage design and stage clothes, ceramics art and glass art, cinema and TV, textile design and fashion design, bookbinding, tilework restoration, calligraphy, rug and old textile design)

Faculty of architecture (industrial design, interior decoration, architecture, urban planning and regional planning)

State conservatory (music, musicology, performing arts)

Vocational school (textile design, building restoration)

Institute of natural sciences

Institute of social sciences

School of informatics


Contact: Mimar Sinan Üniversitesi Meclis-i Mebusan Cad. 80040 Fındıklı - İstanbul

Text adapted from Wikipedia. © http://www.msu.edu.tr/

Thursday, March 22, 2007

St. Petersburg branch of The Institute Of Oriental Studies - Russia

The history of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies can be traced back to 1818, when the Asian Museum of the Imperial Academy of Sciences was founded in St. Petersburg. The Museum was keeping the Eastern antiquities and books of the famous collection of the Russian Tsar Peter the Great. The collection was enhanced during the XIX century through the voluntary donations of the personal libraries and archives of envoys, travellers, statesmen, merchants and scholars. In 1930 the Institute of Oriental studies was organized on the base of the Museum, in 1951 it moved to Moscow, keeping the Branch in Leningrad, now St. Petersburg. From 1996 to 2003 St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies was headed by a famous specialist on history of China and Central Asia Professor Evgeny I. Kychanov.

Now the collection includes the manuscripts and early printed books (in total number of 100 000 items in 63 living and dead languages) and is one of 3—4 most prominent libraries on Eastern Studies outside Asia. Here one can find almost all known oriental scripts and a varied range of media, including stone, metal, wood, leather, papyrus, parchment, birch bark, palm leaf and different types of the paper. The most famous among the manuscript holdings in St. Petersburg are the Tunhuang materials which were acquired by S. F. Oldenburg (1863—1934) in the province of Kansu in North-West China during his expedition of 1914—15. The big Central Asian manuscripts collection, formed mainly in the beginning of the XX century, represents the unique texts from Central Asia in Sanskrit, Saka, Tokharian and Tibetan; the Tangut texts from Khara-Khoto etc.

The collection of the documents comprises the material on a great number of subjects like notes of Russian orientalists on history, literature, geography, folklore of the peoples of the East, the documents on their scholarly and social activities, their letters, photographs, plans etc. The archives keep the materials of various research institutions, congresses of orientalists, the Russian Palestine society, the Russian ecclesiastical mission in Beijing, drafts of some works, day-books, descriptions and reports of expeditions. Among the personal archives are materials of such famous scholars as N. Ya. Bichurin, V. A. Zhukovsky, O. M. Kovalevsky, I. P. Minaev, N. A. Nevsky, A. Ye. Snesarev and others. The earliest archives documents date back to the middle of 16th century. The Archives is divided into three categories, 131 collections including 60 thousand files.

Basic research areas. The main field of the scientific activities of St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies is the fundamental research of the countries and peoples of Asia and North Africa and the Pacific Region; the study of the ancient and medieval Orient, its history, philology, religion, philosophy, law. The many-sided research of the ancient manuscripts and books of rarity in the Eastern languages of the Institute’s collection. The scholars of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies have drawn heavily on the primary sources included in the Institution’s collection for their research. Since first days of the history of the Asian Museum the cataloguing of the collection, publication, translation and investigation of the concrete manuscripts and sources are of the primary importance for the Eastern studies and Sinology in St. Petersburg. At the same time there is no strong obligation for the work on the catalogues and texts, and the scholars have a free choice of individual research themes.
There are 9 departments in the Institute, 3 of them put emphasis on Chinese studies: the Department of the Far East, the Department of the Chinese and Central Asian Historiography and the Group of the Far Eastern textual criticism.

Main scientific achievements. The foundation of the unique branches of the science — the Dunhuang studies (L. N. Menshikov, L. I. Chuguevsky); the Tangut studies (N. A. Nevsky, E. I. Kychanov, K. B. Kepping); the Sabaean studies (A. G. Lundin); the Turkish Runes studies (S. G. Kliashtorny); the Kurdish studies (K. K. Kurdoev). The publication of the catalogues of the collections of the Asian Museum — St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies in Persian (O. F. Akimushkin); Arabian (A. B. Khalidov); Turkish (L. V. Dmitrieva); Mongolian (A. G. Sazykin); Japanese (V. N. Goregliad) and others languages; the compiling of the Chinese-Russian and the Mongolian-Russian dictionaries. The study of the fundamental problems of the Ancient East (V. V. Struve, I. M. Diakonov, M. A. Dandamaev); the Chinese studies (V. M. Alekseev); the Japanese studies (N. I. Konrad); the Korean studies (M. I. Nikitina, A. F. Trotsevich, D. D. Eliseev); the Sogdian studies (V. A. Livshits). The translation of “The Secret History of Mongols” (S. A. Kozin), of “The Ibn-Fadlan’s Trip” (A. I. Kovalevsky); “The Collection of the Annals” of Rashid Ad-din (O. I. Smirnova). The publication of V. V. Bartold’s works (N. N. Tumanovich).

Recent scientific achievements. The publication of 1—3 volumes of “The History of Caliphate” (in 2001 O. G. Bolshakov was awarded the State Prize of the Russian Federation for this work); the compiling of 4 issues of the reference book “Islam on the Territory of the Former Russian Empire” (S. M. Prozorov); the compiling of the computer catalogue of Tibetan manuscripts and block-prints (L. S. Savitsky); the compiling of the catalogue of the Christian manuscripts in Arabian of St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies (Val. V. Polosin, Vl. V. Polosin); the publication of the Eastern Christian apocrypha (E. N. Mescherskaya); the translation of the ancient Chinese treatise “The Discussion on the Salt and Iron” (Yu. L. Kroll).

International cooperation. The Institute has been cooperating with the Scientific Center “Toyo Bunko”, the State University in Kyoto (Japan); Institut de Recherches et d’Etudes sur le Monde Arabe et Musulman (France, Aix-en-Provence); Jewish National Library (Jerusalem); the Publishing House “The Ancient Book” (China); the Bible Society (USA); the Institute of Philology and History, Academia Sinica (Taiwan); the British Library.