Rezeda Safiullina-Al Ansy

Books in Arabic by Tatar Publishers

Above all, I am pleased to welcome you in our beloved city. I wish you successful work and inspiration.

I think that would be fair to say that In this hall gathered the people, unconditionally in love with an Arab book. In which cases the object of love pays us to reciprocate? At the time I.Y.Krachkovskiy so aptly said, “Manuscripts jealous: they want to own the whole person care, and only then show their secrets ...”. These words truly can be attributed to the Arabic printed books.

Among imprints in Arabic script produced in Russia of the 19^th century the considerable part are books in Arabic language.

The primary task of my investigation was to compile union catalogue of books in Arabic produced by Tatar publishers in Kazan, Orenburg, Uralsk, S.Petersburg, Moscow and other towns of Russia.

The main sources for this research were both bibliographic sources (records, indexes, published catalogues, card catalogues of several libraries) and archival documents (registers, reports, surveys and dispatches by Kazan censors ant censorial committee). Also were used card catalogs of different libraries.

We examined de visu the most part of books held at N.Lobachevskiy Scientific Library of Kazan State University (over 1000 editions), at Depositary under the Department of Manuscripts and Textology of G.Ibragimov Institute for Language, Literature and Arts of Academy of Sciences of Republic of Tatarstan (over 300 editions), Central Scientific Library of Kazan Scientific Center of Russian Academy of Sciences (over 250 editions).

In our city books in arabik also is kept (storage) in National Library of RT and National Museum of RT.

The books were examined with the following parameters:

a) subject and topical classification based on the experience of Medieval Muslim writers and scholars, Western and Russian orientalists, catalogs of Arabic manuscripts and prints;

b) philological characteristics of the examined editions according to the language combination and quality (literacy, accessibility and understandability for the reader: diacritic, vocalism, punctuation, availability of comments and gloss, introductions and conclusions);

c) typographic execution (quality of fonts, location of material on the page and in the volume, etc.).

As result there was identified over 600 writings presented according to their titles: titular and colloquial, detailed and abridged, including anonymous collections and writings of Tatar writers in Arabic, etc. Also we needed the identifying over 250 writers of the Arabian and Muslim world, including those from the Volga-Ural region who lived from the 6^th to the beginning of the 20^l century. This identification was conducted through the use of the direct indexes in different editions, reference data of Arabic, Turkish and Persian literature and scientific literature in Tatar, Russian, English, German and Arabic.

The main difficulty of the work was that the “multilayered” Tatar authors' names were often given in summary form, without dates and biographies. Titles of works in a number of sources usually are not deployed, and in such manner as they are used in common parlance, in everyday life of madrassas among shakirds and commoners. even knowing the names of authors and titles of works, dates and other data, it is difficult to determine their place in the overall context of the Arabic literature. This is not a single continuous chain of development, a mosaic pattern. For these publications, especially for the most informative part (introduction, conclusion lines), characterized by a particular language – a mixture of Arabic, Persian, Turkish and Old Tatar languages, which creates certain difficulties for the study.

In connection with these Krachkovsky's words cited as the beginning of my report, (“Manuscripts jealous: they want to own the whole person care, and only then show their secrets ...”) have been for me the key to the disclosure of secrets of Arab books and methodological basis for their identification.

As the mane result there was created a database (Microsoft Access) of books in Arabic published by the Tatars before the October Revolution of 1917. This database includes 3994 entries. Each entry stands for one edition and contains 28 fields that contain the following information:

- Date-line of a book, i.e. author's name, title of the book in Arabic, transliteration conveyance of the author's name and title, translation of the title, editor or a person responsible for the edition, city, printing office, sponsor or publisher, year of publication, number of pages and books published, format, edition, number of printed copies (тираж);

- Information on the availability of the edition at Kazan libraries and its inventory number;

- External characteristic of the edition;

- Information on the background of how the writing was created;

- History of the edition (data on how often this edition was published in Russia, which international editions of this book we know about, what source was used for the first edition, date of the sensorial approval);

- Content;

- Brief information about the author of the writing;

- Type or genre of the writing;

- Sources that helped us to find the information on the book, etc., etc.

Applying to the experience of the middleastern Moslem authors and scholars, also to the native and European orientalists it was exploited followd classification of the Books in Arabic by Tatar Publishers. As you can see, this classification doesn't distinguish essentially from the classifications taking place in wellnown depositeries of the Arabic script moslem books.

1. The Largest part is represented by Koran and it's parts. Among ordinary Muslims were widespread incomplete lists Koran: Heftuyzk sharif – one-seventh of the Koran, Khizb al-A'zam – one sixtieth of the Koran authorized under the Ali ben Sultan al-Kari. Also in large quantities printed Suvar min al-Koran such as Yasin, In'am, Kahf etc. (and other).

2. Tadzhvid. Among the books on tajvid we see works of medieval authors as Shatybi, al-Jazari and new method (jadidi) Textbooks and manuals Tatar authors relating the beginning of the twentieth century.

3. Publications Ekzegeza or Tafsir represent are both a canonized works of medieval authors as Tafsir Jalalayn, and Tatar Tafsir.

4. Hadith.

5. Fiqh.

6. Theology: teachings and rituals of Islam, dogmatics, eschatology, polemical literature, ethico-didactic works.

7. Arabic philology.

8. History and Historiography.

9. Tasawwuf

10. Philosophy, Logic.

11. Prayer books.

12. Pictures, tables.

13. Magic, Kabbalah.

As you can see, the greatest number of publications are in hadith, fikh, theology and logik because these subjects were studied in medrese. Repeatedly reprinted such well-known guide to mazhab Hanafi, as Muhtasar al-Kuduri, al-Hidaya lil-Marginani, Tuhfat al-Muluk lil- Razi, Fikh Keydani. The most common works on dogmatics publications were al-Fikh al-Kabir and 'Aqida an-Nasafi with numerous comments, supracomments and processing works. Also published essays al-Gazali, as-Suyuti, al-'Askalani, at-Taftazani, ad-Dawwani and others to basic doctrines of Islam, eschatology, propaedeutics. Also published treatises and guidance on Sufizm, Prayer books, as authors, and anonymous.

Books in Arabic, not only reproduce the traditional texts of the canonical literature. Religious and social controversy (debate) in purely local subjects took more space among them. This debate was conducted in Arabic, not only because the Arabic language was well aware of the Tatar authors. This language has been well developed for the consideration of theoretical issues. It provided the writers ready-terms and prepared speech speed. Known Tatar scholars and theologians wrote many of theis works in Arabic. G.Utyz-Imyani, G. Kursavi, Sh. Mardjani, R, Fahretdin, M. Chokriy, Tuntari and pothers. With the development of New Method (Jadidi) training, Arabic grammar and style were trained on the new textbooks compiled by Tatar scholars by the European model. G, Barudi, A.-Kh. Maksudi, G, Bubi, Sh. Khamidi, Sh. Tahiri and others.

The collection and processing of the bibliographical and factual database was computer based. Here we encountered some difficulties of the original text input and adequate transliteration conveyance of titles and authors. We had to overcome these inconveniences ourselves through probing, engaging primitive methods and involving experts from various fields. in particular, faced with a number of difficulties associated with entering text in the original language, adequate transliteration transfer titles of books and their authors. The program for working with databases (Microsoft Access-97) which was partially gained (recruited) material had number of significant deficiencies: have been used non-standard fonts developed at that time specifically by local experts. These 29 letters of the Arabic alphabet, which differ depending on their location in the word with all the options for writing (separate, initial, middle and end), receive 85 marks. Given the same and additional signs to describe diaktric elements, vowels, double letters, endings, some combinations of letters recruited more than 190 signs. Because they didn't fin in one keymapping, we were forced to use three keymapping, when typing, we had to constantly switch the keyboard layout. Moreover, old fonts didn't change the direction of the text, so that the Arabic text was recruited as a backward moving the cursor left after each letter. Plus this arabic fonts and fonts of transliteration didn't reflect on the screen of the computer monitor, so we had to recruit them as a blind.

To translate the basic database in the new format was written the program in Visual Basic 6.0. In the search algorithm was proposed and found the path for the transfer of former signs in the old scripts (Mudir MT and Arial T Cyr) in the new Oren-Touré font Times New Roman.

Database of Arabic publications stored in the Central Scientific Library of Kazan Scientific Center of Russian Academy of Sciences was exposed on the Internet.

To avoid the accumulation of information we decided to limit the transfer of author's name and the title of the Arabic graphics, transcription on the basis of Latin alphabet, translation of names into Russian and imprint of edition. The same basic information is also included in the contents of the cards: formulary and cataloging.

This is just the beginning. In comparison with the fact that more can be done, this is just a drop. Deserves special attention Tatar authors writing in Arabic, book figures who took part in the book in Arabic. As he wrote A.B. Khalidov, "The books in Arabic have been their workers, enthusiasts, customers and voluntary philanthropists (now referred to as sponsors). They were full of romantic hopes and faith in the salutary influence of the book."). Their work and they deserve a separate special study. Also requires a separate special study of the history of Muslim religious schools, their educational programs, which are also associated with publishing in Arabic. In the past, many of these books were used in the learning process in mektebe and madrasas. should carefully audit their content. There is a need for a thorough revision of their content. This adjoins the history of our mosques, the Muslim press. In this regard deserve special attention to information about religious figures.

I dream of creating the data with relational communications – structured set of data with the relationships between them. It could form the basis of experience creating the above databases.

As the phases of work, I seen the following relational databases: DB 1 – pre-revolutionary Muslim schools; DB 2 – teaching aids used in the Tatar mektebs and Madrasas. BD 3 – persons (religious and public figures, scientists, teachers, graduates, authors of books and teaching aids, officials, missionaries, etc.), forming the educational policy as well as national and inter-religious policy of the state.

The next step should be to link information blocks in a local network. This will be a kind of Arrays of data or data warehouse (the terms Bill Gates) with the possibility of rapid analysis of various parameters, specialized methods of indexing, query processing, search through a system of hyperlinks. On the basis of the data warehouse can create various directories, reference and bibliographic indexes, encyclopedias, etc.

After the drastic change of the cultural orientation of the Tatars, double change of the alphabets, language renewal and significant time gap this study would contribute to the restoration of the broken ties with centuries-old traditions of the bygone generations and their understanding from the contemporary perspective.

I represent the Institute of History of the Academy of Science of the Republic of Tatarstan. Namely the Center for History and Theory of Education, one of the areas which the history and current state of religious education among Muslim Tatars. With the establishment of a modern system of Islamic education problem of continuity of traditions is at the forefront.

I compared notes (experiences) of establishing a database. When technical inconvenience I had to overcome their own, by trial and error, sometimes artisanal methods, involving experts from various fields.

But even in this state of affairs the use of information technologies, though at an amateur level, contributed to the disposal of endless, laborious and boring operations and served as a powerful research tool. Without it the work would be lasting for many years.

Wellknown that Computer technology proves to be an extremely efficient research instrument for a more successful work in this field. In this connection I believe that the partnership and collaboration with experts and scholars who deal with issues of electronic publications, description and classification of old-published, handwritten and epigraphic monuments would contribute to a more fruitful activity in this area.