Manuscripts from Uzbekistan in the Berlin State Library

The Berlin State Library houses about 190 manuscripts in the Chagatai language. Of course this collection is relatively small when compared to the enormous number of other Islamic manuscripts (about 17,000) held in the library. The Chagatai manuscripts reached the Berlin State Library
from East Asia in a great variety of ways. After 1817 they were acquired by various emissaries, scholars, booksellers or antique dealers. Among them were Heinrich Friedrich von Diez (1751 – 1817), Julius Heinrich Petermann (1801 – 1876), Aloys Sprenger (1813 – 1893), Martin Hartmann (1851 – 1918) and Georg Huth (1867 – 1906). Most of the Chagatai manuscripts in the State Library’s possession come from the Hartmann Collection (133 titles), which Hartmann had assembled by 1905. Two objects from this collection were lost during World War II. Hartmann accumulated the manuscripts between 1902 – 1905 during his stay in Kashgar and Yarkand, the westernmost oases of today’s Xinjiang. A few of them are from Tashkent and Baku.

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