27/08/10 - A Glance at the History of Scientific and Literary Thought of Uzbek people

Дата публикации: Jan 19, 2012 1:49:28 PM

“I wrote with inspiration day by day in lovely native language,” told the outstanding Uzbek poet Alisher Navoi (1441-1501), while completing him poem “Farhod and Shirin”. Namely from his products the rapid development of the Uzbek literature got started. It has become possible to get acquainted with its history (the 15th-20th centuries) in the Alisher Navoi State Museum of Literature of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan.

Founded in 1939 on the basis of the exhibition devoted to the 500th birthday of Navoi, the museum got the status of scientific-enlightening establishment of the Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan on November, 18, 1967. Now it is at the same time the principal depository for monuments of material and spiritual culture of Uzbek people. More than 25,000 exhibits are displayed at the museum. These are not only ancient manuscripts and books, but also samples of book art, miniature, calligraphy, architecture, archeological findings, national applied art as well as models of architectural constructions. Halls of the Museum of Literature represent the exposition of stages of life and creativity of Alisher Navoi, as well as his contemporaries and followers. Thus, the exposition devoted to Amir Temur has the model of a tomb of Go’r Amir in Samarqand. The map of a general view of Central Asia of the 15th century, pictures and miniatures allow to “plunge into” those periods of time. One of the major scientific achievements of Mirzo Ulughbek – the samples of astronomical tables “Ziji Ko’ragoni” exposed here, illustrate the high scientific potential of researchers of that time. Alisher Navoi’s “Hamsa” created by him in 1485 is given the separate attention in the exposition. All five poems are illustrated in the colorful panel of the artist Timur Sagdullayev (1991г.), while canvases and historical data tell about the tradition of writing “Hamsa” in the East. Navoi’s “Hamsa” has been published in many countries of the world. The museum stores the publications in English, French, Russian, Turkish, Japanese, Tatar, Kazakh and other languages. Thus, the heritage of Navoi is highly appreciated not only in our country – the map of the world fame of Navoi exposed in the museum once again testifies to it. Thanks to it you can learn that Alisher Navoi's manuscripts are stored in the Royal Library in England, National Library of France, Library Hudoi Bakhsh in India and many others.

The museum has a separate gallery of lyrical heroes of Alisher Navoi – here you can see a panel of Chingiz Ahmarov’s work that he presented to the museum in 1968. Since it opening the museum has got various presents, for instance, carpet with the image of Navoi from the Tajik masters, the article “Eastern Beauty” from depositories of Iran and others.

The museum has its handwritten fund and storehouse of the old-printed books which quantity exceeds 2000 names including number of unique exhibits which are of huge interest for both local researchers and foreign specialists on history of literature. One of such exhibits is the only list of the manuscript “Muqaddamat al-adab” by Mahmud Zamahshariy. It is the four-language (Arabic – Persian – Turkic - Mongolian) dictionary. In 2008 in Tokyo the Uzbek and Japanese scientists jointly published a printing variant of this priceless manuscript.

“It gives the impulse to the further extensive studying of a handwritten heritage of not only Zamahshariy but others as well who created on the sake of science. Thus, besides this list of the manuscript, the treatise of Zahiriddin Bobur “Mubayin” was published in Turkey the unique list of which is also considered the property of the museum,” says the director of the museum, Professor Saidbek Hasanov. “The Creative heritage of great Uzbek writers and scientists is now steadfastly studied by young experts-philologists and orientalists. Fellows of the Museum of Literature performed a huge work on studying of publications of handwritten monuments of different years at the result of which the first volume of the catalog containing more than 600 scientific descriptions of ancient manuscripts has been published.”

Researches of academics of the museum on “Arbayin” and “Sab’ati abhur” by Alisher Navoi have been awarded the international prize Abd al-Aizi Baptin (Kuwait), while “Hamsa” of five volumes has received a gold medal at the International book fair in Moscow. Results of scientific and enlightening activity are published on pages of monographs, scientific catalogs, albums, guidebooks, collections revealing many unknown pages of the history of Uzbek literature and the literary process as a whole since the most ancient times up to the present. One of such publication is the annual collection “Mirror of Literature”.

The museum staff plans to create an exposition of samples of the literature of the most ancient times. Due to this course the works on collecting the Orkhon-Yenisei inscriptions – the most ancient written monuments of the Turkic-speaking people are being carried out now.

Irina Morozova, UT