Central Asia

The lands which stretch from the Eastern Caucasus mountains across the Caspian Sea and beyond the steppes of Central Asia have long fascinated the Western world. Encompassing transit points between East and West--for commerce, migration, and war--and peopled by a myriad of Turkic and Iranian tribes, as well as other races and ethnicities, the region is full of wild mountainous vistas and extensive monotonous plains. Nonetheless, enduring centers created here have long stirred the imagination. Sheherazade's thousand and one exotic nights were passed, it should not be forgotten, in the magical Central Asian city of Samarkand.

The turbulent history of this area together with that of the various groups populating the Crimea on the northern shores of the Pontus climaxed inexorably in the Russian conquests of the nineteenth century and led just as certainly to the eventual status of these groups as Soviet republics and tributaries. Now, newly independent after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the lands that form Central Asia are the Iranian Tajikastan and the Turkic Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tashkent, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan. Although the Crimea and north Caucasus have been retained as part of Russia--the administrative and ethnic lands of the Ossetes, the Tatars of the Crimea, and Yakuts, for instance--the section also preserves their vernacular materials. Linguistically over twenty-four distinct languages are included in the section's vernacular materials from the area.

The General Collections and the Rare Book and Special Collections Division house many early Western works on the region, from the familiar travelogue to early histories of Islamic regimes, mercantile documents, and political discourses. Gradually, nineteenth-century Russian and European academic publications, such as the highly regarded French Journal asiatique, began to include studies of these many and varied peoples. These publications took on greater urgency in the Soviet period and produced sound critical scholarship. Particularly impressive was the Zapiski of the Institut Narodov Azii of the USSR Academy of Sciences.

Serendipity often plays a role in uncovering rare or unique works from among the millions of items at the Library of Congress. Such a rarity is the multivolume Turkestanskii Albom, in the custody of the Prints and Photographs Division. Filled with ethnographic portraiture, architectural and archaeological photography, and architectural renderings and watercolors of Russian-held Central Asia, this priceless resource, which exists in only seven copies worldwide, was created by Konstantin Petrovich Von Kaufman, Russian governor-general of Turkestan from 1867 to 1882.

Book printing came to the Turkic and Iranian peoples of Central Asia only after the Russian conquest of the area. Yet by the beginning of the twentieth century a number of presses were operating in Tashkent in two traditions. Following the Russian tradition, some presses used the post-Kufi Naskh script in a type font developed during the eighteenth century at the behest of Catherine II of Russia. Others worked in the Nastaliq lithograph tradition imported from Iran. A particularly pleasing example of lithographed Nastaliq works is a copy of Zakariya Qazwini's Ajaib al-makhluqat (The wonders of creation) (Tashkent, 1917). In the Russian Naskh tradition are numerous works held in a separate collection of Muslim printed materials from the Russian Empire and Soviet Union dating from before 1946. Of note among these are a number of children's books printed in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and the Crimea. Sumptuously illustrated and printed on excellent paper, they are indicative of a new conception of childhood in the Muslim societies of the Soviet Union.

Although the collection is exceptionally rich in literature, studies on the history, language, art, and architecture of each of these republics are also well represented. An extensive collection of Central Asian publications from before and after independence includes priceless historical periodicals such as Terjuman (Bahchesaray, the Crimea, 1906-15) and the seminal satirical Azerbaijani journal Molla Nasreddin (Tiflis, 1906-17).

Adding to the value of the collection are Tajik, Uzbek, Tatar, and other encyclopedias, as well as the works of important authors such as Ali Shir Nevai (1441-1501) and the Uzbek, Abdullah Qahhar (1907-81). Moreover, the section holds complete or nearly complete runs of serials published by the Turkic peoples of the Soviet Union since 1955, and particularly since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Included among these are all the journals of the various writers' unions, such as Sharq Yulduzi (Tashkent) and Zhulduz (Alma Ata). Post-independence resurgence of nationalism and religious interests has led to as much publication as each country's economic and political circumstances allow. The discovery of valuable resources and the growing alliances between business interests in the West and the governments of these new states have produced extensive economic, political, and cultural documentation of the societies, both in Western and in the vernacular languages. There is a growing interest in the burgeoning popular culture as well, as witnessed by the acquisitions of the popular literary works of Central Asia's contemporary authors.

What was a compact academic collection has emerged into one capable of supporting advanced multidisciplinary research. As democracy takes hold and economic and political alliances with the West evolve, the Near East Section fully intends to expand its collections of Central Asian materials proportionately.