Some Persian Sources on the History of Turkey

Abstract

The tremendous number of the known Oriental sources on the history of Turkey have not yet been studied sufficiently well. Their publication is not an easy thing. Many sources have not yet been brought to light, catalogued and described. It has been partly due to the fact that they are in libraries and private collections in many countries and not always are accessible ; some manuscripts have been enumerated in various catalogues, descriptions and publications, but there is hardly an institution in the world that would boast of an exhaustive collection of such publications. Therefore, any serious research work is possible only under the condition that the necessary composite reference materials are prepared. This makes it expedient to coordinate the efforts of historians of various countries aimed at the finding of manuscripts with the prospect of publishing a collective work discribing all existing sources on Turkey's history and at studying the most valuable sources and preparing of joint works on the problem of sources. Soviet scholars, Y. Borshchevsky and Y. Bregel among them already emphasized the necessity of the compilation of a bio - bibliographical work on the Iranian and Tajik manuscripts. In their article recently printed in the magazine "Peoples of Asia and Africa" these scholars offered their project of such a publication. A similar project could be adopted as the basis for the compilation of a composite reference work on the sources on Turkey's history.