Persian manuscripts stored at Matenadaran Museum in the Armenian capital Yerevan have been indexed in a recently published catalogue.
The Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts in Matenadaran is the fruit of 12 years of hard work by Armenian codicologist and historian Kristine Kostikyan, a researcher at the Institute of Oriental Studies, National Academy of Sciences in Yerevan, according to the website of Written Heritage Research Center (mirasmaktoob.ir).
The Mesrop Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts, commonly referred to as Matenadaran, is a large repository of ancient manuscripts, a research institute and a museum. It is home to one of the world’s richest depositories of medieval manuscripts and books spanning a broad range of subjects, including history, philosophy, medicine, literature, art history and cosmography in Armenian and many other languages.
Kostikyan is a senior researcher of Matenadaran’s Department of Description and Study of Arabic Script Manuscripts. Her catalogue includes the descriptions of 450 Persian manuscripts kept in the Mashtots Institute of Ancient Manuscripts.
The author worked on it from 2005 to 2016 following the modern principles in description of Islamic manuscripts and cataloguing manuscripts.
The book is published by Nairi Publications based in Yeravan. It is a valuable reference for codicologists, experts in Iranian studies and those doing research in the history of Islam.
Given the role and influence of the English language in the contemporary world, the catalogue of manuscripts is written in English.
In cataloguing the manuscripts, Kostikyan made a comparative analysis with the collections of Persian manuscripts stored at the libraries of Cambridge University in UK and Tehran University, as well as the Iranian Parliament Library.
Among the indexed manuscripts, there are some with Arabic and Turkic parts.
The project was sponsored by the Iran Heritage Foundation, a non-political charity based in London to promote Iranian culture.
