Arabic Script Monuments of the Fedorovka District of the Republic of Bashkortostan: The 15th - 19th Centuries

Archaeographic research makes it possible to expand the source base of scientific research, to introduce into scientific use new materials on the history in general and on the history of written language and literature. The article is to study the Oriental written monuments of the Fedorovka district of the Republic of Bashkortostan stored in the manuscript fond of the Institute of History, Language, and Literature of the Ufa Federal Research Center of the Russian Academy of Sciences. The research has used the major methods of historical research: comparative/historical, systemic, and historical/typological. Monographic studies, catalogues of manuscript collections, manuscripts and early printed editions from the fonds of manuscripts and rare editions of the city of Ufa have been drawn for comparative analysis, establishing of names, identifying distinctive features, identification of the place and role of handwritten manuscripts. The article presents some of the more valuable Arabic script monuments written in Arabic and Turkic languages. It reviews literary, religious works, historical documents, texts of business and mundane nature. The chronological frameworks cover the 19th - first half of the 20th century. Many documents were used as teaching aids in the pre-revolutionary Muslim educational institutions. Of most interest are materials collected by M. Sultangulov from the village of Stary Chetyrman. Among them there are manuscripts containing poems: Sufi Allayar's (died in 1723) Sabat al-Gajizin and Muhammad Chelebi's (died in 1451) Muhammadiya, both rewritten in the first half of the 19th century. The handwritten curriculum for 1911 for studying in the madrasah in the town of Orsk in the Orenburg gubernia reveals the peculiarities of the Muslim education system in the region. Arabic script documents of the period of struggle against religion reveal the nature of relations between the believers and state agencies. Also, manuscripts of poems by Bashkir poets of the 19th century have been identified and studied: Khibatullah Salikhov (1794-1867), Shamsetdin Zaki (1822-65), Miftakhetdin Akmullah (1831-95). Thus, the article has examined handwritten Arabic script documents that are valuable for researchers of history, language, and literature. The revealed materials permit to present the studied region as one of cultural centers of Bashkortostan, where the works of famous Oriental authors, as well as local writers and poets, existed. They demonstrate that in Bashkortostan, despite the repeated change of alphabets in the first half of the 20th century, Arabic script written monuments continued to be used and stored. The identified and attributed documents can be used as sources for scientific research.