Asian and African studies blog

Following the recent cyber-attack on the British Library, the Library has now implemented an interim service which will enable existing Registered Readers to access some of our printed books and serials and a significant portion of our manuscripts. This service will be expanded further in the coming weeks. 

We understand how frustrating this recent period has been for everyone wishing to access our Asian and African Collections and we would like to thank you for your patience. We are continuing to work to restore our services, and you can read more about these activities in our Chief Executive's post to the Knowledge Matters blog. 

The Using the Library page on our temporary website provides general information on current Library services, and advice for those without an existing Reader Pass. Please read on for information about the availability of specific Asian and African collections. 

Printed books and serials 

You can now search for printed items using a searchable online version of our main catalogue of books and other printed material. Online and advance ordering is unavailable, so Registered Readers will need to collect a paper order form from staff in the Asian and African Studies Reading Room and fill in the required details. Please write the shelfmark exactly as it appears in the online catalogue. 

Only a small portion of the printed books and serials in the Asian and African Collection will be available for consultation in the Reading Room. Unfortunately, we cannot guarantee availability of any printed items. Materials stored in Boston Spa are current unavailable, and items stored in our St. Pancras location might be in use by another Reader or restricted for other reasons. If you wish to gain greater assurance on the availability of a particular item before you visit us, please contact our Reference Services Team by emailing [email protected].

Manuscripts and archival documents 

Although the Library’s online catalogue of archives and manuscripts is not currently available, the Reference Services Team can assist with queries about these collections, checking paper catalogues and other sources. Please speak to the team in the Asian and African Studies Reading Room or email [email protected].  Some of our older printed catalogues have been digitised and made available online without charge. For quick access to the digitised catalogues of manuscript and archival material, or to online repositories of images, please make use of the links below:

Africa 

• Catalogue of the Ethiopic manuscripts in the British museum acquired since the year 1847 
• A guide to manuscripts and documents in the British Isles relating to Africa 

East Asia 

Chinese 

• Union catalogue of Chinese rare books, including basic records for the pre-1912 printed holdings 
• UK Union catalogue of Chinese books, including the British Library holdings for Chinese material collected between approximately 1993 and 2014. The old interface can be found at a website maintained by Oxford University.  
• Catalogue of Chinese printed books, manuscripts and drawings in the library of the British Museum, with a print version containing shelfmarks found in the Asian and African Studies Reading Room 
• Supplementary catalogue of Chinese books and manuscripts in the British Museum 
• The British Library has also digitised some of its card catalogues of Chinese-language printed books. These can be downloaded as a Zip file comprised of PDF scans of the cards using the Wade-Giles Romanization scheme (pre-1966 acquisitions) or using the Pinyin Romanization scheme (acquisitions from 1966 until 1993). 

Japanese 

• CiNii Books - National Institute of Informatics (NII), a bibliographic database service for material in Japanese academic libraries including 43,000+ British Library books and periodicals. Please use FA012954 in the Library ID field 

Korean 

• Korean Old and Rare Collection Information System, including information on and images of 92 of the Library’s Korean titles. 

Middle East and Central Asia 

• FIHRIST (Largely Persian, but also includes some Kurdish, Pashto, and Turkic materials) 

 Arabic 

• Catalogus Codicum Manuscriptorum Orientalium Qui In Museo Britannico Asservantur (1838) Pars Secunda (Arabic) 
• Catalogue of Arabic books in the British Museum: Volume 1 Volume 2 Indexes  
• A descriptive list of the Arabic manuscripts acquired by the Trustees of the British Museum since 1894 
• Supplement to the catalogue of the Arabic manuscripts in the British Museum 
• A catalogue of the Arabic manuscripts in the Library of the India Office (Loth) 
• Catalogue of two collections of Persian and Arabic manuscripts preserved in the India office library 
• The Arabic Papyrology Database (search under Inventory Number “Lond.”) 
• Catalogue of the Arabic manuscripts in the Library of the India Office. (Vol. II). Fasc 2: Sufism and ethics; Fasc 3: Fiqh 

Armenian 

• A catalogue of the Armenian manuscripts in the British Museum 

Coptic 

• Catalogue of the Coptic manuscripts in the British Museum 
• PATHs, an ERC-funded project that includes information on British Library Coptic literary manuscripts, interspersed with information about manuscripts in other collections 

Hebrew  

• Catalogue of the Hebrew and Samaritan manuscripts in the British museum Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3 

Persian 

• Rieu’s Catalogue of the Persian Manuscripts in the British Museum Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3 
• Catalogue of two collections of Persian and Arabic manuscripts preserved in the India office library 
• Catalogue of Persian manuscripts in the India Office Library (1903) 
• Storey’s Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts Volume III (Qur’anic Manuscripts) along with Guidance on usage   
• Catalogue of the library of the India Office. Vol. 2, Pt. 6, Persian books 
• Ursula Sims-Williams' Handlist of Islamic manuscripts acquired by the India Office Library 1938-1985 

Syriac  

• Catalogue of Syriac manuscripts in the British museum acquired since the year 1838 Volume 1 Volume 2 Volume 3   
• Catalogus Codicum Manuscriptorum Orientalium Qui In Museo Britannico Asservantur (1838) Pars Prima (Syriac and Garshuni) 
• Handlist of Syriac manuscripts in the British Museum Acquired since 1899 

Turkish and Turkic  

• Catalogue of the Turkish manuscripts in the British Museum 

South Asia 

Early printed books:

• Full list of catalogues on South Asian printed books in the Library of the British Museum hosted by the Digital South Asia Library 
• Catalogue of 19th century publications in the Oriental and India Office Library 
• South Asia Union catalogue 
• Catalogue of the Library of the India Office, vol. 2, part 1: Sanskrit books Section 1 (A-G) Section 2 (H-K) Section 3 (K-R) Section 4 (S-Z) 
• Publications proscribed by the Government of India: a catalogue of the collections in the India Office Library and Records and the Department of Oriental Manuscripts and Printed Books, British Library Reference Division. Shaw, Graham and Lloyd, Mary, 1985.
• Catalogue of the Pali printed books in the India Office Library, Raper, T. C. H., 1983. 

South Asian language manuscript catalogues:

Bengali and Assamese 

• Catalogue of the Bengali and Assamese manuscripts in the Library of the India Office 

Hindi, Panjabi and Hindustani

• Catalogue of the Hindi, Panjabi and Hindustani manuscripts in the library of the British Museum 

Marathi, Gujrati, Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Pushtu and Sindhi 

• Catalogue of the Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Assamese, Oriya, Pushtu and Sindhi manuscripts in the library of the British Museum 

Oriya 

• Catalogue of the Oriya manuscripts in the Library of the India Office 

Pali 

• Pali manuscripts in the India Office Library 

Sanskrit and Prakrit 

• Catalogue of the Sanskrit manuscripts in the British Museum (1902) 
• Catalogue of the Sanskrit and Prakrit manuscripts in the Library of the India Office Parts 1-4 (1-2636) Parts 5-8 (2637-4203) 
• Catalogue of two collections of Sanskrit manuscripts preserved in the India Office Library (1903) 

Sinhalese 

• Catalogue of the Sinhalese manuscripts in the British Museum 

 Tibetan 

• Catalogue of the Tibetan manuscripts from Tun-huang in the India Office Library 

South-East Asia 

• Southeast Asia Library Group Newsletter, archive 2008-2023 

Burmese 

• A catalogue of the Burmese books in the British Museum, L. D. Barrett, 1913 
• Catalogue of Burmese printed books in the India Office Library, Kenneth Whitbread, 1969
• A hand-list of the manuscripts in Burmese collection in the British Library San San May, 2011
• India Office Library Burmese manuscripts in the British Library, San San May, 2019 
• Catalogue of the Burney Parabaiks in the India Office Library, Thaung Blackmore, 1985
• Catalogue of the Mandalay manuscripts in the India Office Library, Fausboll, 1897  
• Pali manuscripts in the India Office Library, 1882 
• Catalogue of the Pali printed books in the India Office Library, Raper, T. C. H., 1983. 

Indonesian

• Indonesian Manuscripts in Great Britain, including British Library's collections

Thai 

• ‘Henry D. Ginsburg and the Thai Manuscripts Collection at the British Library and Beyond' 
• A guardian of Thai treasures: Henry Ginsburg (1940-2007) on the Asian and African Studies Blog 

Access to some archival and manuscript material is still restricted, but the majority of special collections held at St Pancras are now once again available. Our specialist archive and manuscripts catalogue is not online at the moment so you will need to come on-site to our Reading Rooms, where Reading Room staff will be able to help you search for what you need, and advise on its availability.

To place a request to see a manuscript or archival document, Registered Readers need to collect a paper order form from staff in the Asian and African Studies Reading Room and fill in the required details, including the shelfmark (manuscript number). The Library has created an instructional video on finding shelfmarks.  

Visual Arts 

The Print Room, located in the Asian and African Reading Room, is open by appointment only on Monday and Friday between 10.00 am-12.30 pm. Prints, drawings, photographs and related visual material in the Visual Arts collection can be consulted by appointment. Please contact the Visual Arts team via email (apac[email protected]) to check the availability of required items and to book an appointment. Please note that advanced booking is required. Restricted items including the Kodak Historical Collection, Fay Godwin Collection, William Henry Fox Talbot Collection are not currently available to Readers. 

• Mildred Archer’s Company Drawings in the India Office Library 
• Mildred Archer’s British Drawings in the India Office Library, Vol. 2: Official and Professional Artists 
• Mildred Archer’s Indian Popular Paintings in the India Office Library 

Microfilms 

The Reference Services Team in the Asian and African Studies Reading Room has a list of microfilms of printed and manuscript materials. 

Digital resources 

A number of our early printed books are available on Google Books. 

We regret that our digitised manuscripts and electronic research resources are currently unavailable. Nevertheless, some of our digitised manuscripts are available on external platforms: 

East Asia 

• Academica Sinica’s Digital Atlas, including 120 antiquarian Chinese maps from the British Library
• EFEO’s collection of Chinese rubbings, including some of the British Library’s holdings 
• The Union Catalogue Database of Japanese Texts, including 56 digitised items from the British Library 
• Or.59.aa.1, Images of the Amakusa edition of the Heike Monogatari, Isoho Monogatari and Kinkushū
• The Japan Center for Asian Historical Records (JACAR), which includes 235 Japanese and Chinese prints of the Sino-Japanese War from the British Library 

Middle East 

• Digital Edition of the Coptic Old Testament, including leaves of British Library Coptic papyri interwoven with images from other institutions  
• Ktiv (Manuscript Database of the National Library of Israel), including all digitised Hebrew manuscripts from the British Library
• Qatar Digital Library, including digitised Arabic manuscripts from the British Library

South Asia 

• Jainpedia, including digitised Jain manuscripts from the British Library

South-East Asia 

• South East Asia Digital Library, including a collection of digitised rare books from South East Asia held at the British Library 
• National Library Board, Singapore, digitised Malay manuscripts and Qur'ans, papers of Sir Stamford Raffles, and the accounts by Colin Mackenzie on Java held at the British Library
• Or 14844, Truyện Kiều (The tale of Kiều) by Nguyễn Du (1765-1820), the most significant poem in Vietnamese literature 
• Or 15227, an illuminated Qurʼan,19th century, from the east coast of the Malay Peninsula
• Or 16126, Letter from Engku Temenggung Seri Maharaja (Daing Ibrahim), Ruler of Johor, to Napoleon III, Emperor of France, dated 1857
• Mss Jav 89, Serat Damar Wulan with illustrations depicting Javanese society in the late 18th century
• Or 14734, Sejarah Melayu (Malay annals), dated 1873
• Or 13681, Burmese manuscript showing seven scenes of King Mindon's donations at various places during the first four years of his reign (1853-57) 
• Or 14178, Burmese parabaik (folding book) from around 1870 with 16 painted scenes of the Ramayana story with captions in Burmese 
• Or 13922, Thai massage treatise with illustrations, 19th century 
• Or 16101, Buddhist Texts, including the Legend of Phra Malai, with Illustrations of The Ten Birth Tales, dated 1894 
• Or 16797, Cat treatise from Thailand, with illustrations, 19th century 
• Or 4736, Khmer alphabet, handwritten by Henri Mouhot, c.1860-1 

• Images from Thai manuscripts on BL Images Online  
• Images from Burmese manuscripts and photographs on BL Images Online  

Visual Arts 

• ArtUK, which includes a subset for the British Library's collections including India Office oil paintings and sculptures
• Photographs including Archaeological Survey of India on BL Images Online
• Indian miniatures including the Johnson Collection on BL Images Online
• Natural History Drawings from South and South East Asia on BL Images Online
• Fay Godwin photographs on BL Images Online
• William Henry Fox Talbot Catalogue Raisonné, which includes digitised early photographs from the British Library and other institutions 

We thank you, once again, for your patience as we continue to work to restore our services. Please do check this blog and the temporary British Library website for further updates. 

This guest blog, by Prof. Edwin Wieringa of Cologne University, How Old is the Language of Young Malay Manuscripts? A note on the unusual Malay reflexive phrase bertunjukkan diri(nya), turns the spotlight on a phrase in of one of the oldest Malay texts, ‘Tales of the Wise Parrot’.


A drawing of a green parrot, in a copy of the Arabic text, Kitāb ʿajāʾib al-makhlūqāt wa-gharāʾib al-mawjūdāt, 16th-century. British Library, Or 4701, f. 214r

Some years ago, when two copies of the Hikayat Bayan Budiman or Tale(s) of the Wise Parrot just had been digitized, Annabel Teh Gallop posted helpful background information to this work and its textual witnesses on this blog, pointing out that it was probably composed in the 15th century or earlier, but that the two digitized manuscripts at the British Library dated from the early 19th century. This considerable time gap prompts the general and broader, though rarely raised or discussed, question as to whether such relatively young copies may still be regarded as faithful keepers of an older language layer. As the Dutch philologist Roelof Roolvink (1965: 311) warns us, “at any period a copyist, apart from making the usual copyist’s mistakes and embellishments of style etc., was inclined – as was only natural – to substitute new words and forms for those that had already become obsolete or otherwise unintelligible at the time the copy was made.”


Opening pages of Hikayat Bayan Budiman, copied in Penang in 1808. British Library, MSS Malay B.7, ff. 1v-2r 

An intriguing example of a substitution of an unusual grammatical expression can be observed in the transmission of the Hikayat Bayan Budiman. Profiting from the availability of digitized images of MSS Malay B.7, which I recently used for a course in reading the Jawi script of Malay manuscripts, my attention was drawn to a reflexive phrase with an unconventional ber-…-kan verb, namely bertunjukkan dirinya (“to show itself/herself/himself/themselves”), which may very well represent the original wording of many centuries ago. This variant reading does not occur in the critical text edition made by Sir Richard Olaf Winstedt (1878-1966), which is based on two other principal manuscripts from the 19th century. In the Malay Concordance Project, a wonderful online research tool of the late Ian Proudfoot (1946-2011), the latter observed “a tendency to complex verbal morphology” in the Hikayat Bayan Budiman; Proudfoot’s list of words found in Winstedt’s edition facilitates research in this aspect of the text, but without – of course – reference to the morphological form ber-tunjuk-kan.

The opening of the frame story in MSS Malay B.7, which I had chosen for students as reading matter, telling about the plucking of the parrot by the merchant’s wife, is not too difficult to read, because the script is clear and easily legible, while the text runs parallel to Winstedt’s edition. However, in the episode in which the published text edition (Winstedt 1966: 14) has Maka bayan itupun keluarlah terbang menunjukkan dirinya kapada isteri saudagar itu seraya katanya (“Then the parrot came out flying, showing itself to the merchant’s wife, while saying …”), the British Library manuscript is considerably shorter, namely (f. 7v, line 12): Maka bayan itupun bertunjukkan dirinya kepada perempuan itu seraya katanya (“Then the parrot showed itself to the woman, while saying…”).


The line reading: Maka bayan itupun bertunjukkan dirinya kepada perempuan itu seraya katanya from Hikayat Bayan Budiman, 1808. British Library, MSS Malay B.7, f. 7v (line 12)

The reflexive phrase consisting of a ber-...-kan verb with the reflexive pronoun diri (“self”) is not found in the dictionaries (including the online official monolingual dictionaries of Indonesia and Malaysia), whereas Roolvink (1965), in a rare case study of the historical grammar of the Malay language, could not muster any examples of bertunjukkan. Roolvink based his grammatical study on a corpus of fifteen text editions, including Winstedt’s Hikayat Bayan Budiman, which in my opinion is merely a random sample, though Roolvink (1965: 313) confidently thought that it gave “a good representative of the older language”.

Fortunately, over the last decades, many more text editions have become available, but the unusual reflexive phrase remains a peculiarity: a Malay Concordance Project search for bertunjukkan mentions only one example in the Hikayat Indraputra, in which the eponymous protagonist is “showing himself” (Indraputra … bertunjukkan dirinya…) and is subsequently seen by the nymphs (maka Indraputrapun dilihat oleh segala bidadari). The MCP also mentions three other examples of bertunjukkan (but without diri(nya)), namely two from the Hikayat Iskandar Zulkarnain and one from a 17th century collection of Sufi tracts. An internet search brought to light another example in a copy of the Hikayat Amir Hamzah (Indonesian National Library, ML 23, p. 3), in which the two brothers Ghar Turki and Tar Turki, who want to attack Hamzah, “show themselves” (bertunjukkan dirinya), whereas the text edition by A. Samad Said has the common expression of menunjukkan dirinya.* As the Hikayat Indraputra and the Hikayat Amir Hamzah together with the Hikayat Bayan Budiman belong to the oldest works of traditional Malay literature, it seems likely that the reflexive phrase bertunjukkan diri(nya) reflects an older layer of Malay, which by the 19th century was considered by copyists as an archaism in need of revision.

All this goes to show that a reader of Malay manuscripts needs to be sensitive to the textual instability of the transmitted texts. Variant readings are invariably cause for ‘philological alarm’ and should draw us into closer reading.

* Retrieved from an unpublished paper by Prima Hariyanto, p. 27, uploaded on Scribd. The Romanised transliteration in this paper (which I could not check against the original) is: “Maka arikian Goraterka dan Taraterka pun bertunjukkan dirinya.” The corresponding sentence in A. Samad Ahmad’s text edition (1987: 323) reads: “Ketika itu Tarturki dan Gharturki pun menunjukkan dirinya.”

References
R. Roolvink, “The passive-active per-/ber- // per-/memper- correspondence in Malay” in Lingua 15 (1965), 310-337.
A. Samad Said, Hikayat Amir Hamzah. Kuala Lumpur: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka, 1987.
R.O. Winstedt, Hikayat Bayan Budiman. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1966.

Edwin P. Wieringa, Professor of Indonesian Philology and Islamic Studies, University of Cologne, Germany

The Portuguese were the first Europeans to sail around the southern tip of Africa and across the Indian Ocean to reach India and then Southeast Asia. In 1511 Portuguese forces captured Melaka, the greatest Malay kingdom in Southeast Asia, and held it until 1641. Throughout the 16th century armed Portuguese envoys-cum-merchants roamed across the Malay archipelago in search of spices, without competition from northern European traders, who only arrived on the scene at the turn of the 17th century. It is thus a source of consternation that almost no Malay or other vernacular Southeast Asian manuscripts can be found today in Portugal, compared with the many hundreds held in Britain, the Netherlands, France and Germany. Admittedly, the oldest surviving paper manuscript in Arabic script from Southeast Asia – a letter in Arabic of 1516 from the ruler of Pasai in Sumatra to the Portuguese governor of Goa in India – is held in the Torre do Tombo Archives in Lisbon, as are the two earliest known Malay manuscript letters, from Ternate in 1521 and 1522. But not a single Malay manuscript volume or ‘book’ is known to be held in Portugal.

Ivo Castro, Hugo C. Cardoso, Alan Baxter, Alexander Adelaar, and Gijs Koster (eds), Livro de Pantuns: um Manuscrito Asiático do Museo Nacional de Arqueologia, Lisboa / Book of Pantuns: an Asian Manuscript of the National Museum of Archeology, Lisbon (Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional, 2022).  British Library (shelfmark forthcoming). 

Therefore, the news of the recent publication this year of Livro de Pantuns / Book of Pantuns, presenting a manuscript containing Malay pantun or quatrains, from the collection of the National Museum of Archaeology, Lisbon, was greeted with much interest all over the world. The manuscript was said to date probably to the late 17th/early 18th century, and contained a number of sequences of poems written in both Portuguese creole and Malay in romanised script, created and circulated in the mixed Mardijker communities of Tugu and Batavia around present-day Jakarta in Java. Would this discovery perhaps lead to the unearthing of other Malay manuscripts long hidden in repositories in Portugal?

We are most grateful to the publishers for kindly sending a copy to the British Library, and as soon as it arrived on my desk, I eagerly unwrapped the package to browse the volume. To my surprise, it transpired that the manuscript had not, as I had assumed, been resting undisturbed for several centuries in Portugal since making its way to Europe from Java (p. 97). Instead, it had first surfaced in London in around 1865, in the hands of the now venerable but then newly-established antiquarian bookseller, Bernard Quaritch (whose firm has just celebrated its 175th birthday). The purchaser, Ernst Reinhold Rost (1822-1896), was a polymath linguist who had close connections both with the British Library and Malay scholarship: from 1869 to 1893 he served as Librarian of the India Office, and he also contributed the articles on ‘Malay Language and Literature’, amongst others, to the 9th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Rost was in contact with Hugo Schuchardt (1842-1927), a professor at Graz in Austria who had a lifelong interest in creoles or dialectal variants formed through contact between European and other languages. The Pantuns manuscript was of enormous interest to Schuchardt, to whom Rost sent the manuscript in 1885, initially on loan before formally gifting it in August 1895 (pp. 98-99). On his own death in 1927, Schuchardt in turn bequeathed the manuscript to a Portuguese scholar, José Leite de Vasconcelos (1858-1941), who had visited Graz especially to study the book. Leite was the founder of the National Museum of Archaeology in Lisbon, and on his death his papers and collections were all willed to the Museum. However, as Leite never mentioned that the Malay manuscript was in his possession, it was only ‘rediscovered’ in a box in the Museum in 2018 (p. 96) – which happy event led to the publication of the present book.

This fully bilingual book is a rich collaboration between a large number of scholars, with detailed contextual studies on the history of the manuscript by Ivo Castro and Hugo C. Cardoso; on the ‘Portuguese-lexified Creole’ verses by Alan Baxter and Cardoso; on the Malay poems by Gijs Koster; and on the spelling and language of the Malay used by Alexander Adelaar. As shown below, the manuscript itself is presented generously and impeccably, with a beautifully printed full facsimile accompanied on each page with a diplomatic transcription of the text. This is followed by the edition proper in which the Malay pantuns appear in turn in diplomatic transcription, modernised spelling, modern Malay rendering, Portuguese translation and English translation, with full bilingual annotations at the foot of each page for easy reference.

Facsimile of the manuscript, with the diplomatic transcription of the text in the margins of each page. Livro de Pantuns, pp. 224-225

Text edition of the manuscript, presented in five columns, with on the left hand page first the diplomatic transcription of the Malay, followed by the modernised spelling in the centre and then the modern Malay rendering. On the right hand page are the Portuguese and English translations of the Malay. Livro de Pantuns, pp. 332-333.

I chose the pages above because they contain the section entitled Panton Dari Sitie Lela maijan, ‘The poem about Siti Lela Mayang’, which, as Gijs Koster explains (p. 138), bears strong similarities in parts to a well-known narrative poem called Syair Sinyor Kosta, ‘Poem on Sinyor Kosta’. This poem is also known as Syair Silambari, and is found in the Malay manuscript shown below (MSS Malay B 3), from the collection of the India Office Library and now held in the British Library, copied in Penang in 1806 by the scribe Ibrahim.  The Penang version begins with this verse:

Penang, 1806:
Ada satu silam bari / bunga kembang dini hari
pari bijak si Peringgi / kita karang satu nyanyi

In a tale from long ago / A flower blossomed in the early morning
About the wisdom of that Portuguese / I have composed a song

While the Batavia 'Panton', written down perhaps a century and a quarter earlier, begins:
Ayo silam konon bari  / kembang bunga dini hari
kita karang satu nyanyi / akan bijak si Peranggi

Long ago, they say, in the distant past / A flower blossomed in the early morning
I have composed a song / About the wisdom of that Portuguese

And indeed, the next quatrain in the Penang manuscript - introducing Siti Lela Mayang - occurs on the following page of the Batavia manuscript too. Hearing exactly the same phrases and words in the Batavia panton and the opening of the Penang syair, even with the lines transposed, hints at just how familiar this repertory of verses would have been to the audiences of port cities throughout the Malay world in the 17th and 18th centuries. It furthermore illustrates the crucial importance of the Lisbon manuscript as an early chronological marker for the circulation of these poems.

It is tempting to wonder whether Reinhold Rost ever considered presenting his Malay manuscript of pantuns to the India Office Library, to join its 'sibling' Syair Silambari MSS Malay B.3.  However, if this had happened, it is unlikely that the Livro de Pantuns / Book of Pantuns would have benefitted from the combined attentions of such an impressive array of experts as has been assembled in Lisbon, resulting in this wonderful new publication.

Syair Silambari, Malay narrative poem, copied by Ibrahim, Penang, 1806. MSS Malay B 3, ff. 22v-23r   

Annabel Teh Gallop, Lead Curator, Southeast Asia

The terms pirate(s) and piracy feature heavily in India Office Records relating to the Persian Gulf during the nineteenth century. Many of these records have now been digitised through the British Library / Qatar Foundation partnership and can be accessed on the Qatar Digital Library accompanied by catalogue descriptions in English and Arabic. In these records, “piracy” was used to justify British naval presence in the Gulf, forming the basis of the early agreements signed with local tribal leaders. However, the Arabic versions of these agreements indicate that the Arab inhabitants of the region did not have an equivalent concept in their lexicon. So where did today’s Standard Arabic word for piracy come from? And why wasn’t it used in these agreements?

Article 1 of the English (IOR/L/PS/10/606, p. 131r) and Arabic (IOR/L/PS/10/606, p. 146v) versions of the 1820 treaty between Britain and the Arab tribes of the Persian Gulf. The word piracy is translated as ghārāt [raids].

Tracing the Etymology

Modern Arabic dictionaries list the terms qurṣān (pirate) and qarṣanah (piracy) under the trilateral root Q-R-Ṣ, giving the impression that this is a true Arabic word derived from this root (which generally means ‘to pinch/sting’). In fact, some Arabic sources devoted to the subject of piracy define qarṣanah as a derivative of that root (see for example, Hamid 2016: 22). However, this is a common misattribution.

The term is actually a relatively recent addition to the Arabic language, and is a cognate of the English term ‘corsair’ from the Latin cursarius. The earliest Arabic dictionary to include qurṣān to mean ‘sea thief’ is al-Bustānī’s Muḥīṭ al-Muḥīṭ (1870), where it is listed as a plural noun and marked as ‘foreign’ (إفرنجية). Further clues can be found in Reinhart Dozy’s Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes (1877-1881) which includes colloquialisms and foreign borrowings in Arabic. Dozy lists قرصل ( qurṣul), قرصال (qurṣāl) and كرسالي (kursālī) in addition to qurṣān to mean both ‘pirate’ and ‘warship’, and he links them to Spanish (corsario) and Italian (corsale). Also listed are the now common forms qarāṣinah (pirates) and qarṣanah (piracy).

The entries for قرصل (qarṣala) and قرصن (qarṣana ) in Dozy’s Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes (1881, p. 329). Public Domain. Image taken by author.

As a Semitic language, Arabic has a root-and-pattern morphology. Words are formed by casting (typically 3-letter) roots into a variety of templates to produce different meanings. In the case of the borrowed word for piracy, it was a happy coincidence that it could be filed under the existing root Q-R-Ṣ.

Early Use

All this confirms that the words qurṣān and qarṣanah are of foreign origin, and that their meanings did not stabilise until modern times. One of the earliest attested uses of qurṣān in Arabic comes from a 1767 maritime treaty between the Sultan of Marrakesh, Muḥammad V (1710-1790) and the King of France, Louis XV (1710-1774).

Image of the 1767 treaty signed between the Sultan of Marrakesh and the King of France. Public Domain.

Article 17 of the Arabic version begins:

إذا دخل قرصان من قراصين الفرنسيس لمرسى من مراسي الإيالة المولوية فإن القونصوا الحاضر في الوقت بالبلد يخبر حاكمها بذلك ليتحفظ على الأسارى الذين بالبلاد لئلا يهربوا للسفينة المذكورة...

Translation: If a qurṣān (of the qarāṣīn) of the French enters one of the harbours of the Mawlawī territory, the attending [French] Consul in the town must inform its governor so that he may take precautions over prisoners in the country to prevent them from fleeing to the aforementioned ship…

There is no doubt that qurṣān and qarāṣīn (pl.) refer to a type of ship in this context. Other parts of the treaty mention qarāṣīn flying the French flag and carrying French passports. While we can assume that qarāṣīn here means military rather than pirate ships, the line between piracy and naval warfare had been blurred in the Mediterranean for centuries. This is particularly clear in accounts of Ottoman Berber “pirates”, or the infamous “Barbary corsairs”.

‘A Sea Fight with Barbary Corsairs’ (after 1681) by Flemish painter Laureys a Castro. Public Domain.

Transmission and Popularisation

Given these encounters, it is not surprising that the term qurṣān entered the Arabic language through North Africa. The Arab tribes of the Persian Gulf lived on the other side of the Arabic-speaking world, so this neologism would have taken time to reach them. When they entered into maritime treaties with Britain in the nineteenth century, there was no distinct word in their vocabulary to denote ‘piracy’ as something that is exclusively perpetrated at sea.

The final step in the accession of the term into Arabic came with the language standardisation efforts of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, a period known as the Arabic nahḍah. This period saw a flurry of production of dictionaries that standardised the term qurṣān as a singular form meaning ‘sea thief’. Advancements in education, media, and transport networks across the Arabic-speaking world ensured the establishment and transmission of the term.

Along with the term itself, a stereotypical Western image of the pirate also spread into modern Arab culture. Ironically, this Western image was influenced by contact with Ottoman and Arab “pirates”. For instance, the character of Redbeard is based on the Ottoman “corsair” Baba Oruç (Barbarossa), while the characteristic eye-patch is inspired by the Qāsimī “pirate” Raḥmah bin Jābir al-Jalhamī.

Sketch of Raḥmah bin Jābir al-Jalhamī from Ellms’ (1837) The Pirate’s own Book. Public Domain.

The British narrative of piracy has been challenged by writers from the region in recent years. Two notable examples are The Myth of Arab Piracy in the Gulf by scholar and ruler of Sharjah, Sulṭān Muḥammad al-Qāsimī, and The Corsair by Qatari journalist and novelist Abdulaziz Al-Mahmoud. The latter is a fictionalised account of the exploits of Raḥmah bin Jābir al-Jalhamī from an anti-imperial point of view. Its original Arabic title is al-Qurṣān. Even where the narrative is challenged, its language has stuck.

Modern Use

In the modern world, the term “piracy” has come to stand for so much more than aggression at sea, and the Arabic term qarṣanah has evolved in tandem. An example of this is the now commonly used expression ‘pirated films’ and its Arabic equivalent alflām muqarṣanah أفلام مُقَرْصَنَة.

Screenshot of concordance results for the term piracy and its translation in memoQ, the translation management system used by BL/QFP translators.

As BL/QFP translators, wherever the English term piracy appears in catalogue descriptions, we translate it using the now established Modern Arabic word qarṣanah. However, this does not reflect historical usage and it is unlikely that the nineteenth-century Arab inhabitants of the Gulf would have heard this word, let alone used it.

Mariam Aboelezz, Arabic Translator
British Library / Qatar Foundation Partnership

References:

al-Bustānī, Buṭrus (1870) Muḥīṭ al-Muḥīṭ: qāmūs muṭawwal li-l-lughah al-ʿArabīyah. Beirut (OIE 492.73)

Al-Mahmoud, Abdulaziz (2011) al-Qurṣān. Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing

Al-Mahmoud, Abdulaziz (2013) The Corsair. Noweira, Amira (trans.). Bloomsbury Qatar Foundation Publishing (H.2015/.9446)

al-Qāsimī, Sulṭān Muḥammad (2016) The Myth of Arab Piracy in the Gulf. London: Routledge (DRT ELD.DS.562531)

Majmaʿ al-Lughah al-ʿArabīyah (1961). al-Muʿjam al-Wasīṭ (1961). Cairo (14589.c.21)

Dozy, Reinhart P. A. (1881). Supplément aux dictionnaires arabes, Vol II. Leiden: Brill (X.985/73)

Ellms, Charles (2004[1837]) The Pirate’s own Book. Project Gutenberg [accessed 23 June 2022]

Ḥāmid, Ḥāmid S. M. (2016) al-Qarṣanah al-Baḥariyyah: bayn al-asbāb wa-l-tadā‘iyāt wa-l-ru’á al-istrātījiyyah . Cairo: al-Markaz al-Qawmī li-l-Iṣdārāt al-Qānūnīyah

London, British Library, 'File 2902/1916 ‘Treaties and Engagements between the British Government and the Chiefs of the Arabian Coast of the Persian Gulf’' IOR/L/PS/10/606. Qatar Digital Library [accessed 23 June 2022]

Riḍā, Muḥammad R. (1904) Kitāb al-Muṣālaḥah al-Muntaẓimah bayn Ṣulṭān Marākish wa Luwīz al-Khāmis ‘ashr Malik Faransá. Majallat al-Manār, 7, pp. 783-791. Al-Maktabah al-Shāmilah [accessed 23 June 2022]

Woodbridge, David, Aboelezz, Mariam and Abu Shaban, Tahani (2021) “Piracy” in the India Office Records: some historical context . Qatar Digital Library [accessed 23 June 2022]

An illustration of a dream sequence featuring two individuals seated in a garden from a 16th-century recension of the story of Layla and Majnun in the Azerbaijani language. (Füzulî, Leyli vǝ Mǝcnun, Azerbaijan, 16th century CE. Or 405, f 97r)

As a Canadian in London, one thing that makes me roll my eyes is being asked to say the word “about”. Everyone expects me to exhibit what’s known as Canadian raising, where those of us from Southern Ontario say the word as if it were spelled “aboot”. People have a good chuckle, and I grumpily insist we don’t do that in Toronto, and then we go on our merry ways. It’s not really all that important, but it does make me think, sometimes, about the assumption that English words are meant to be read one and one way only. Perhaps “about” should sound like “aboot”; and “caught” and “cot” should be distinct from one another; and “think” and “fink” really ought to be homonyms. What about going the other way, from writing into speech? If I write “about”, how do you know I didn’t mean for it to be pronounced “aboot”? For London to be heard as Lundon? Or that “breed!” is actually an instruction for you to breathe? In truth, our assumptions about these choices say more about our own backgrounds and prejudices than we care to reveal. The same can be said about many other linguistic communities, both historic and current, around the globe. In the Turkic collections, a particularly interesting example of this phenomenon appears in our holdings of Azerbaijani manuscripts.

The first page of the newspaper Nicat (Salvation), published in Azerbaijani in Arabic script during the Tsarist period. (Nicat, 1:1 (Baku: Nicat Qiraatxanǝsi, 20 November 1910). ORB.30/342)

It wouldn’t be one of my blogs if it didn’t start off with some sort of caveat. So, let’s get it out of the way. I use the term “ Azerbaijani” broadly in line with Euro-Atlantic linguistics: to denote a Turkic language of the Oghuz sub-branch that is closely related to Istanbul Turkish , and that is spoken in the Caucasus (especially the Republic of Azerbaijan) and in northwestern Iran. In English, we also have recourse to the shortcut Azeri, which usually means the Turkic language Azerbaijani. But Azeri might also mean Old Azeri or Azari, a now-dormant Western Iranian language from the same region that might be linked genetically to Tati or Talysh. In the Republic of Azerbaijan, the official name of the language is Azərbaycan dili (“Azerbaijan language"), but it can also be called Azərbaycanca (making use of the -ca/cə language suffix), or, less frequently, Azəricə. In this region, Azerbaijani was largely written in the Arabic script until the early 20^th century, when the Soviet authorities first imposed the Latin-based Uniform alphabet in the late 1920s, and then a modified Cyrillic alphabet in the 1930s. In 1991, the year in which complete independence was achieved, the Republic of Azerbaijan officially adopted the Latin script for the language.

The world-renown Iranian singer Googoosh performing the Azerbaijani folk song Ayrılıq in Azerbaijani. 
(©VestiKavkaza, uploaded to YouTube). 

South of the border, in Iran, the term “Azeri” usually refers to the old Iranian language and not the Turkic one. Here, the preferred terminology is Torki (ترکی, in Persian) or Türkçǝ (تۆرکجه, in Azerbaijani), and the dominant script is a modified Arabic one. While the varieties spoken in the Caucasus and Iran are distinct dialects, they do form a single linguistic grouping, relying on many common grammatical and lexical features, and share a common linguistic history. Speakers of the language in Iran vastly outnumber those in the Caucasus (perhaps 13 million to just over 9 million in the Republic, according to the CIA World Factbook as quoted on Wikipedia). Azerbaijani is not an official language in Iran, but can be found fairly frequently online and in printed media. Turkic-speakers have long been integrated into broader Iranian society, and many notable personalities in Iranian history come from Turkic backgrounds: Shah Ismail I; Ahmad Kasravi; and yes, even the world-renowned singer, Queen of contemporary Persian pop, Googoosh.

The cover of a periodical produced in Baku, Azerbaijan in the 1930s featuring the Latin alphabet imposed by Soviet authorities between 1927 and the late 1930s. (InqilaB vǝ Mǝdǝnijjǝt, 1-2 (Baku: AzǝriNǝshr, 1934). ITA.1986.c.18(9))

As always, there are considerable political implications to the choice of terminology. My intention here is to mirror common Anglophone usage of the terminology, not to promote a particular movement or point of view. That said, the question arises: what makes something an “Azerbaijani” manuscript? The British Library holds some 7 manuscripts that can be described as containing texts in Azerbaijani. All of these are in an Arabic orthography that mirrors Ottoman Turkish quite closely, leaving Arabic words in their original spellings and marking only some vowels in non-Arabic words. This might make it seem as though telling Ottoman and Azerbaijani apart would be impossible, but there are a few clues. One of the easiest is the use of a syllable final -x (like the ch in loch) where Ottoman Turkish would have a -k. Çok “many” or “very” in Turkish becomes çox in Azerbaijani, and bakmak “to look” in Turkish is baxmaq in Azerbaijani, for example. Turkish employs the suffix -iyor for the present continuous, while Azerbaijani uses -ir. And, after the 16^th century, Turkish uses only the suffix -miş for the perfective, while Azerbaijani has both -miş and -ip (in the 2^nd and 3^rd persons). There are, of course, other tells in terms of phonology, morphology, syntax and lexicon, but these are usually the easiest. And they help clue us in, broadly speaking, to how to pronounce those undifferentiated spellings of Arabic words I mentioned up above.

An illustration of Mǝcnun amongst animals from an illustrated 16th-century manuscript in the Azerbaijani language. (Füzulî, Leyli vǝ Mǝcnun, Azerbaijani, 16th century CE. Or 405, f 73r)

So what, exactly, do these manuscripts comprise? Usually literary works, but there are also a few historical items as well. Undoubtedly, the most awe-inspiring item is Or 405, Füzulî’s Leyli vǝ Mǝcnun, copied in 1075 AH (1664 CE). This is Füzulî’s own recension of the classical tale, and one that he admits to having translated from a Persian source on the behest of his friends in Istanbul. This bit of information is important, as it shows how Azerbaijani functioned as a literary medium independently of Ottoman (or Istanbul) Turkish, permitting the translation and adaptation of texts from other languages in its own right. The copy held by the Library is a spectacular specimen of the tale, as it is accompanied by vivid and bright illustrations that relate to the stories found within the text. There are some lovely examples of Leyli in a graveyard and Mecnun among animals, all of which combine a simplicity of line and feature with motion and bright colours. And Or 405 also contains more than a few examples of the linguistic features that help us distinguish dialects, whether the presence of çox and yox (written چوخ and یوخ ), or the preponderance of -ip forms throughout.

The şemse or sun motif (left) and opening text with unvan (right) of the Divan-i Xǝtai, exemplifying the lush illumination found throughout the volume. (Xǝtai, Divan-i Xǝtai, Iran or Azerbaijan, 16th century CE. Or 3380, ff 2r-v)

Or 405 is the only illustrated manuscript in Azerbaijani held at the British Library, but it is by no means the only beautifully constructed volume in the language. Or 3380, the Divan-i Xǝtai, is a 16^th century copy of the collected poetry of Shah Ismail I, whose poetic pseudonym or mahlas was Xǝtai/Khaṭā’ī (خطائى). The work’s imperial connections are made apparent by the beautiful gold artistry and calligraphy employed throughout the volume. Shah Ismail was of mixed heritage and grew up speaking both Azerbaijani and Persian. Supported by various Turkic communities, he rose to power by defeating the Aq Qoyunlu confederation, and established the Safavid Empire, becoming Shah of Iran in 1501 CE. Ismail I is famous for many different reasons, including the imposition of Twelver Shi’ism as the official religion of his Empire, but he was also a renown poet in his own right. This confluence of political and literary prestige is undoubtedly the reason why his mahlas is written in gold throughout the work. Its entire construction is impressive; an example of luxury bookmaking in Safavid Iran. But so too is the poetry, which addresses both temporal and sacred love.

A folio of text from another recension of the story of Leyli vǝ Mǝcnun in Azerbaijani, not composed by Füzulî. (Leyli vǝ Mǝcnun, Iran?, 18th century CE. Add MS 7936)

The rest of the Azerbaijani items in the British Library’s holdings are not nearly as spectacular as Or 405 and Or 3380, but they do merit attention. The fourth text of Add MS 7936 is another version of Leyli vǝ Mǝcnun copied in the 18^th century CE. This piece was written by an unnamed poet (not Füzulî), who appears to have made use of some of the Persian versions of the story to craft their own work in the 16^th century CE. While the calligraphy and lack of illumination makes this a rather plain and run-of-the-mill text, the copyist’s alternation between one and two columns, prose and poetry, does provide an additional element of interest for those curious about the Azerbaijani literary set-up of the period.

The densely packed script of the Tarix-i Sam or Samname, with the addition (?) of punctuation and Persian text in red. (Tarix-i Sam, Iran?, 1265 AH [1848-49 CE]. Or 11130, f 236v)

The other three texts in the Arabic script are all translations, glosses or paraphrases of earlier Persian works, once again highlighting just how closely linked the history of Azerbaijani literature is to that of its Iranic neighbours. By and large, these are historical texts revolving around the lives and experiences of notable people, real or imagined. Or 11130, Tarix-i Sam İbn-i Nǝriman, also known as the Samname, for example, is an Azerbaijani rendition of a legendary history prepared for a meddah, or traditional storyteller, based on an earlier Persian version. The Samname derives from the Shāh-nāmah (and so includes stories of Rustam) and can be found in its Persian original in other British Library manuscripts, including Or 2926. The opening of the work is in Persian, but then continues into an Azerbaijani dialect in an orthography that departs slightly from what we would normally expect based on the other texts found in the British Library collections. I have banged on about this before (particularly when looking at Chagatai manuscripts), but it remains to be seen whether these idiosyncrasies reflect dialectal differences, or just the personal choices of Muhǝmmǝd Rıza İbn-i Mǝrhum Molla Abdurrıza, the manuscript’s copyist.

Or 5772, in contrast to the Samname, deals with the life and miracles of Şeyh Safi, a 13^th century CE Kurdish Sufi mystic and poet from Ardabil, a city that has long had a heavy concentration of Turkic speakers. This 16^th century manuscript also provides a fairly thorough account of the rules and precepts of the Safavid Order of Sufis. This particular text raises a different set of questions, ones not related to language. Translations in many of the Ottoman and Azerbaijani works can create issues of citation and attribution. Some translators make clear reference to their source text, while others don’t. Perhaps text compilers might have sampled heavily from a number of different works by the same author, or maybe they constructed paraphrases or compilations of various works, all with the same title or dealing with the same issue, but by different authors. Whatever the case, these items, among which Or 5772 should be classed, cannot always be matched to an original source text. The item in hand, for example, might be related to the Persian work Maqalāt va Maqāmāt by Şeyh Safi, but we will only know for certain when greater research is conducted on it.

Initial text (left) and the colophon (right) from the Kitab-i Baxtiyarnamǝ, along with the start of a Persian-language text at the end of the colophon. (Kitab-i Baxtiyarnamǝ, Iran?, 1199 AH [1784-85 CE]. Or 9839, f 2r and f 95v)

We have a bit more luck with Or 9839, Kitab-i Baxtiyarnamǝ, which, as you might have guessed, is an Azerbaijani gloss of the 12^th-13^th century Persian work Bakhtiyār-nāmah. This tale, which follows a familiar pattern of a captive telling stories in order to delay their eventual execution, can be found in a variety of versions. Further investigation is needed on Or 9839, therefore, to determine the source text of the translation, and the Azerbaijani gloss’ connection to other recensions. This process is eased by the fact that the text of the Baxtiyarnamǝ also contains occasional interlinear glosses in Persian, which might be the original source text. These follow a pattern seen in other bilingual or multilingual works, in which one language (Azerbaijani) is written using nesih, while another (Persian) can be found in nestalik. The beginning and end of the volume feature much more wear and tear than the body of the text, and a number of smudged ownership seals can be found on f 98r. Combined with the fact that someone appears to have added ᶜUbayd-i Zākānī’s mesnevi Qiṣṣa-i Sangtarāsh on ff 95v-98r (maybe the copyist of the manuscript, Molla Muhamməd Rəsul vələd-i Muhamməd, himself?), it’s clear that this manuscript created in 1199 AH (1784-85 CE) was well-used, if not also well-loved, by its owners and readers.

Manuscripts are fascinating sources for the study of literature, history, language, religion and politics. They are also documents that link past generations with current and future ones, and help to preserve cultural heritage. The Azerbaijani-language manuscript collection at the British Library is small in number, but it does present an opportunity to fulfil both aspects of manuscripts’ potential usefulness. By identifying and describing them sensitively, these treasures can be made discoverable to scholars from around the world. They also become more accessible to Azerbaijani-speakers not engaged in scholarly research, and more amenable to be reintegrated into the evolution and articulation of their identities, wherever they might find themselves. Thanks to these processes, we might finally figure out just how the gilded words they contain were really meant to sound.

Dr. Michael Erdman, Curator, Turkish and Turkic Collections

For more information on the characteristics of various Turkic languages and dialects, see:

The Turkic Languages, ed. Lars Johanson and Éva Á. Csató (London: Routledge, 1998). (YC.1999.b.2111)

Several weeks ago, I wrote about the provenance and curation of the 150-odd works in our Chagatai collections. In that blog, I promised that I would return with a related piece about the languages of our holdings. In this piece, I'll be looking at where the name "Chagatai" comes from, why we use it to describe our holdings, and why it isn't an ideal way to refer to what we have on hand. 

Two pages from the 8th-century CE divination book Irq Bitig, written in Old Turkic script. (Irq Bitig. Dunhuang. 8th century CE. Or 8212/171)

The earliest written records in a Turkic language come to us in the form of the Orkhon inscriptions, which were produced some time in the 8^th century CE. Turkic lects were obviously spoken long before this, but the inscriptions are among the first written records that we have by which to measure their spread and evolution over the following thirteen centuries. The inscriptions were written in the Old Turkic script, which I wrote about in this blog. It is replicated in Or 8212/76(1) and Or 8212/76(3), military inventories, as well as in Or 8212/161, the famous 9^th-century CE Irq Bitig divination manual. These documents are part of the British Library’s Stein Collections and provide an exceptionally rare look at the early history and worldview of the Turkic languages and people. While there is remarkable uniformity between the language of the Orkhon inscriptions and the manuscripts in the Library’s collections, orthographic idiosyncrasies point to the great influence that individual writers exerted in defining early written Turkic expression. Such peculiarities would grow to reflect dialect divergences over the coming centuries.

During this time, the Turkic peoples underwent some pretty fundamental changes. In the 8^th century CE, Islam began to take root among Central Asian communities, radically altering worldviews as well as linguistic patterns. It led to the introduction of new words, concepts and paradigms into Turkic lects and literatures. The 11^th century CE saw two different milestones of importance for Turkic historical linguistics. In the 1070s, the Qarakhanid polymath Kaşgarlı Mahmud compiled his Divan-ı Luğati’t-Türk (YP.2007.a.173), a compendious dictionary of the Turkic dialects, and an invaluable window on linguistic diversity within the language family. In the same century, the Seljuqs, a clan from the Oğuz confederation, swept through Persia into West Asia. They brought with them the dialects that would eventually come to dominate Turkic communities throughout the Ottoman Empire and Azerbaijan.

The first page of the Nusratnama, greatly faded, with showing the intricacy of the illumination. (Nusratnama. Central Asia. 970 AH/1563 CE. Or 3222, f 1v)

In the 13^th century CE, a different invasion – that of the Golden Horde – brought another seismic shift. Genghis Khan and his Mongolian armies whipped across Eurasia, subjugating Turkic states caught in their path. While there is some Mongolian input into the development of many Turkic languages, its influence over Central Asian and western Turkic languages over subsequent centuries was not nearly as great as that of Persian. Language does not exist outside of a historical vacuum, however, and Genghis Khan’s invasions did effectively tip the scales of fortune in favour of certain dialect groups. The Chagatai Khanate, established under the sovereignty of Genghis Khan’s second son Chagatai Khan, is such an example. Originally Mongolian in language, the state was gradually Turkicized. As it reached the zenith of its political and military power under Timur, the Turkic dialects of the region gradually began to coalesce as a language of state power. Add MS 7851, Al-Rabghuzi’s Qisas al-anbiya, reflects this stage of transition and the emergence of Chagatai as a language of literature and statecraft. The Khanate’s military prowess waned over the next three centuries, but its cultural legacy only continued to grow. From the 14^th century CE right up to the advent of Soviet power in Central Asia, Chagatai was a medium of literary creation and historical recording from Delhi to Siberia, and from Iran through to Bengal.

The problem, however, is that what was written in 15^th-century CE Samarqand wasn’t necessarily the same dialect as that found in a 19^th-century CE manuscript from Qazan or Qashgar. As a language, Chagatai never had a state-sponsored, institutionally-regulated standard in the way that Turkish, French, Filipino or Korean do. Moreover, there is no body of active, native speakers on whom to rely for intelligibility tests, as one would use for lects without global standards, such as English, Southern Quechua or Yoruba. As a result, the tag “Chagatai” is used by the Library – and many orientalists, but not linguists – to describe a body of works that exhibit a breathtaking amount of linguistic variation. The great poet Mir Alisher Navoiy, a giant in the canon of Chagatai literature, helped to set a benchmark for composition in the language. So too did Babur, the founder of the Mughal Dynasty. But without an active insistence on these examples being prescriptive, as well as admirable, there was little to discourage writers from including social or geographical variants as they sought fit. I’m not a linguist, and I am by no means competent in determining which alternative label might be better to affix to some of the works in our Chagatai collections. Nonetheless, with what follows, I hope to elucidate why we have grouped so many disparate works together, and why improved access to them might help me and future curators in understanding just how to describe them.

(Left) Words in the Kyrgyz dialect of Bukhara along with Arabic and Persian translations indicated in red. (Muhammad Karim al-Bulghari. Sabab-i Taqviat. Kazan. 19th century CE. Or 11042, f 57r)

(Right) Explanations of various Turkic dialects in Persian with examples from the dialects themselves. (Sindh, Pakistan. 1253 AH [1837 CE]. Or 404, ff 17v-18r)

The authors of some texts make this task relatively easy by stating overtly which lects they are using or discussing. Numerous manuscripts contain vocabularies of different dialects, as well as explanations of the divergences in pronunciation, morphology, syntax and semantics between the different Turkic communities. Or 11042, for example, gives us a glossary of the words used by Kyrgyz-speakers around Bukhara. Compiled by Muhammad Karim al-Bulghari of Qazan in the 19^th century CE, it was intended to provide Tatar students in Bukhara with a key to the peculiarities of local speech patterns, translating these words into Persian and Arabic. Or 404 , by contrast, goes even deeper into the question of linguistic diversity, as Dr. Paolo Sartori has highlighted for me. A Persian and Turkic codex, the author of the first text, Ashur Beg, aimed to distinguish seven different dialect groups: Turani, Uzbeki, Irani, Qizilbashi, Rumi, Qashgari, and Nogay. While it is easy to guess how some of these map onto contemporary linguistic groups (Rumi is probably Ottoman; Qashgari is probably related to Uyghur; and Nogay might be Nogay and other Caucasian Qipchaq varieties), others are more difficult. Is “Irani” the Turkmen varieties of north-east Iran and Central Asia? And where does Turani fit in? Evidently, we still have quite long strides to make in order to understand how to reconcile the worldviews of the authors of these texts with those of the speakers of the languages discussed, both past and present.

Similarly, Or 1912, a Chagatai-Persian codex that contains numerous linguistic tracts, presents us with a few more issues of nomenclature. Copied in India in the mid-19^th century CE, the work demonstrates Mughal scholars’ interest in various Turkic dialects. The first three texts present grammars and vocabularies of Chagatai, Azerbaijani, Nogay and Qashgari, none of which pose too many problems when it comes to identifying, roughly, contemporary linguistic communities. The fourth text, however, creates a bit of confusion. The author, who might have been Aghur bin Bayram Ali Bi, states that Turkic peoples are divided between two camps: the Aimaqs, who say things like qayda, qanday,qali and tash, and the Turkmen, who say hayda, handay, ghali and dash. These divisions do appear to mark some phonological differences that we know of today. Consider, for example, Kazakh (Qipchaq) qajet and Turkish (Oğuz) hacet (meaning “need”); or Kazakh taw and Turkish dağ (meaning “mountain”). But beyond this, the lines start to get fuzzy. Today, Aimaq primarily designates Dari-speaking communities in Afghanistan; some members do claim descent from Turkic-speakers of Central Asia. Are these the same people described in the text? Did Aghur bin Bayram Ali Bi retain a record of their ancestors’ speech patterns, or is he describing a completely different group of people? Only further research of this and related manuscripts might help us to get closer to the truth.

Chagatai, of course, isn’t just a language of manuscripts. For much of the 19^th century CE, lithography was also used for the reproduction of texts. Lithography, unlike early movable type, helped replicate more faithfully the nastaliq style of calligraphy common in many Central Asian manuscripts. Movable type was also used, however, particularly within the context of Europeanisation programs imposed by various colonial empires. In the early 19^th century CE, presses existed at Qazan (a history of it by R. I. Yakupov is available here ) as well as St. Petersburg, and were soon established in Tashkent, Orenburg, and Bukhara. The earliest example held in the British Library is the Makhzan al-asrar, published in Qazan in 1858 (ITA.1986.a.1077). It isn’t particularly beautiful, but it does embody some of the important history of Chagatai publishing. The monograph was published by Joseph Gottwaldt (there’s only a German-language biographical page for him), a professor of Arabic and Persian at Kazan University from 1849 until 1897. Gottwaldt became the University’s Oriental Librarian in 1850 and headed up its publishing house from 1857, showing, once again, the deep links between orientalist scholarship and the publishing of Chagatai literature.

The title page (left) and a page of poetry (right) showing the heights of lithographed calligraphy and imager from a Central Asian publisher. (Mashrab, Divan-i Mashrab (Tashkent: Tipografiia Bratsei Portsevykh", 1900).) (ORB.30/8204)

Not all printed editions of Chagatai literature were created within the Imperial academy. A copy of the Divan-i Mashrab (ORB.30/8204), the collected poetry of Boborahim Mullah Wali, a 16^th-17^th century CE Sufi intellectual also known as Mashrab, was likely produced for the enjoyment of a Central Asian readership. This beautiful edition was lithographed in Tashkent in 1900 and demonstrates the aesthetic heights attainable for late 19^th-century CE Central Asian artisans. It also provides us with a clear contrast to contemporary works produced by Turkic speakers, putting into relief the growing chasm between literary and vernacular modes of expression.

Articles from the magazine Shura about sex work (left) and original works of creative writing with more vernacular linguistic features (right). (Shura (Orenburg: Vakit Nashriyati, 1908-1917).) (14499.tt.18)

Vernacularization was already a trend by the final years of the Tsarist Empire. Turkic intellectuals across the Romanov lands were publishing in dialects influenced more by how people spoke than by traditional literary convention. In some cases, the result was written language that aligned somewhat closely with languages used today. The early 20^th -century CE periodical Shura (14499.tt.18), published in Orenburg by the Bashkir and Tatar Jadid Rizaeddin Fakhreddinov (Ризаитдин Фәхретдин), provides an example that shows Chagatai and Tatar features. Among them are the use of -ymyz instead of-ybyz for the first person plural (a feature of Chagatai), and the appearance of tügel for the negative copula (common in Tatar). It seems that Fakhreddinov operated on a sliding scale, with a more literary style preferred for social commentary, and, ironically, a more vernacular one for literary pieces.

The title page (left) and introduction (right) to a book about the travels of Abdurreshit Ibragimov and their importance for Turkic national development. (Davr-i Alim (Kazan: Tipografiia gazety Bayan'ul-khak", 1909).) (14499.p.5)

Contrast this to the book Davr-i Alim (14499.p.5), an account of Abdurreshit Ibragimov’s (Габдрәшит Ибраһимов) travels around the world and their impact on national development. It contains elements that are common in Oğuz dialects (olmak, ile) as well as features that can be found in Qarluq or Qipchaq ones (-gan past and -a tur constructions). It’s not Chagatai, but it’s also not proto-Uzbek or Turkmen or Tatar. What’s going on here?

The cover page of the periodical Oyna (Mirror), published in Turki (called Uzbek in Russian), Persian and Russian by the Jadidist intellectual Mahmud Hoja Behbudi. (Oyna (Samarqand: Makhmud Khwaja Behbudi, 1913-1915).) (ITA.1986.a.1625)

Perhaps what we’re seeing is something new – an emergent lingua franca for Muslim Turkic communities across Eurasia. Occasionally, it is referred to by the simple moniker of Turki, a name that was, incidentally, used to refer to Chagatai as well. We see on the cover of an issue of Oyna (ITA.1986.a.1625) from 1914. Other types of common Turkic systems had certainly been proposed – the most famous of which was pushed by İsmail Gaspiralı – but none seemed to gain unconditional support among intellectuals and the average Turkic-speaker alike. A scholar of Eastern Turkic texts, literary culture and multilingualism, Ahmet Hojam Pekiniy, alerted me to the widespread presence of an inter-dialect Turki in Eastern Turkestani documents too. There is still so much more for us to understand about this phenomenon, and how it relates to Chagatai linguistically, historically, socially and politically.

In the end, it wasn’t the printing press or mass communication that forced standardization, but rather the process of Sovietization. Soviet authorities, informed by Stalin’s Nationalities’ Policy, set about demarcating the languages of distinct Soviet peoples. Chagatai lost out to a host of semi-vernacular, heavily-managed languages – Uzbek, Tatar, Bashkir, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, and Turkmen, among others – which became the new literary norms. Chagatai, or maybe Turki, didn’t die out completely, but lived on for a while longer in exile. I’ve written about Yangi Yapon Mokhbire elsewhere, but it’s worth mentioning once more as an example of the continued use of the language as a common denominator amongst exiles from various Turkic communities, at least until the late 1930s. Nonetheless, Chagatai’s quiet disappearance from the world stage has denied us the opportunity to understand truly what it was and was not, and to see its place within the rich tapestry of Turkic cultural production. And for the community of cataloguers and curators, it means a continued struggle to categorize these works in a way that makes them discoverable and useable by readers from around the globe. In time, we hope, a greater public interest in them and the language itself will help revive some of Chagatai's importance in understanding the history of Eurasia.

Dr. Michael Erdman, Curator, Turkish and Turkic Collections

Further Reading

Eckmann, János, Chagatay Manual ([London?]: Taylor and Francis, [2017]). (DRT ELD.DS.166473)

Khalid, Adeeb, The Politics of Muslim Cultural Reform: Jadidism in Central Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999).

Schluessel, Eric, An Introduction to Chagatai: A Graded Textbook for Reading Central Asian Sources (Michigan: University of Michigan Press Services, 2018). (YP.2019.b.567)

The Turkic Languages, edited by Lars Johanson and Éva Á. Csató (London: Routledge, 1998). (YC.1999.b.2111)

This blog deals with the earliest Yorùbá books held at the British Library up to 1870, some of which have been digitized. At the end of this blog is a link to a bibliography of all these items and where they are available digitally.

Vocabulary of Yorùbá Language by Samuel Ajayi Crowther (General Reference Collection 1333.f.23)

The first Yorùbá-language published item in the British Library dates to 1843. That is:

• Samuel Ajayi Crowther, Vocabulary of the Yoruba Language. Part I. English and Yoruba. Part II. Yoruba and English. To which are prefixed the grammatical elements of the Yoruba language (London: Church Missionary Society, 1843)

Subsequent items published around the same time give an insight into the early days of Yorùbá language publishing — a list of them is available for download at the end of this list. There are thirty-five items I found catalogued between 1843 and 1879, using a list of catalogued entries with ‘yor’ language classification, along with other speculative searches on BL Explore.

Out of these, fourteen have been successfully digitized and exist either as a digital collection item or on Google Books, with a few exceptions. But all reachable from the British Library website.

The last digitized item is —

• Samuel Ajayi Crowther, Ihin Rere ti Mateu revised by C. A. Gollmer (London : B. & F.B.S., 1871.)

Both Crowther and Gollmer have been dead for more than seventy years, which allows for their work to be made public in this way, as prescribed by copyright laws governing the entry of published books into the public domain. All the other works in this list also fall under this description.

What is most notable about these works is that they are mostly either a record of missionary activities or a record of outputs of missionary activities of these early writers. The books of the bible were common. The first in this list is

• Samuel Ajayi Crowther (translator), The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans (London : C.M.S., 1850).

This is the first published book of the bible into Yorùbá. Others followed at different times.

Then there are books of common prayers, like

• Samuel Ajayi Crowther (translator), Iwe Adua Yoruba. A selection from the Book of Common Prayer (London : Church Missionary Society, 1850).

But there was also commentary on the religious practices of the environment in which these missionaries worked. For instance

• James JOHNSON (Assistant Bishop of Western Equatorial Africa), Isin orisa bibọ ni ilẹ Yoruba. [A Yoruba version of “Yoruba Heathenism.”] (James Townsend & Son, 1899)

Or

• Christian Knowledge Society, Ipari ero t'awọn olobirin pipọ. Yoruba tract on Polygamy. London (London : Christian Knowledge Society, 1888).

Kristi ti Awon Sacramenti. One of the early missionary books in Yorùbá published in 1960 by Longmans London (General Reference Collection 012991.r.14)

There is also travel writing, for instance:

• S Tucker, (Sarah), Abbeokuta; or Sunrise within the Tropics: an outline of the origin and progress of the Yoruba Mission. [With plates and maps] (London : James Nisbet and Co, 1853)

which has invaluable knowledge of the àrokò system, described briefly in this essay by the British Library Africa Curator, Dr. Marion Wallace;

Message of good will from Abbeokuta; or Sunrise within the Tropics: an outline of the origin and progress of the Yoruba Mission

and

• Mary Ann Serrett BARBER, Oshielle: or Village life in the Yoruba Country; from the journals and letters of a Catechist ... describing the rise of a Christian Church in an African village. (London : J. Nisbet & Co, 1857).

The rest are grammar books, like the aforementioned Vocabulary of the Yorùbá.

There are also periodicals, such as

• Iwe Irohin Eko, etc. Yoruba & Eng. ọdun 3. ewe 61. 9 May 1891. (Lagos, 1891) —

which I have talked about at length in an earlier blog.

The digitization of some of these materials have put them in the hands of people who may not have been able to physically come to the British Library — especially now during this time of the pandemic. While the physical copies remain at the Library and will remain available for time to come, having them digitally present extends the reach of their use to a wider audience. It is of immense benefit for researchers interested in the origins of Yorùbá language publishing, the work of the early Yorùbá language missionaries, the record of the original translations of the bible into Yorùbá, the thoughts of people traveling within the Yorùbá country in the middle of the 19th Century, and any other interesting tidbits that can be obtained by contact with such records.

One of the books within this range—

• A.G Charles Andrew Gollmer, Way to Peace. Onan si Alafia. [A collection of religious tracts.] Translated into the Yoruba language (London, 1861)

—no longer exists as a physical item at the British Library. A note in the record says “Physical condition: Copy at D-4419.h.24.. Destroyed in World War II.” It may exist in some other library or private hands, but the record puts into sharp relief the benefits of digitization for the long term survival of these records.

As I mentioned earlier, some of these items are on Google Books while some are on the British Library website. Their presentations are also different. The Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Romans, for instance, does not have its cover page on Google Books; one lands on the title page. Whereas, in the BL Viewer, one begins on the cover page, with a chance to see the cover art and enjoy a little faux sensation of encountering a real book. The BL viewer also presents full metadata on the right side of the page. What Google Books has that the BL Viewer does not is a search box, allowing the user a chance to go directly to the search term they may be looking for. On the BL Viewer, one can only go to specific pages, not to specific terms/words.

Having both options available for researchers is a great help. Unfortunately, not all the digitized options show up on the BL search results. I have indicated in the linked list: Publications in Yorùbá 1843 – 1879 held by the British Library where they have been digitized and where they have not.

Oguyomi. A story of the mission at Ibadan in the Yoruba country, published by the Basle Missionary Society. Romansch. Basel, 1867 (General Reference Collection 884.a.13.(2.))

Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún is a Nigerian linguist, scholar, and writer, author of Edwardsville by Heart, a collection of poetry. He is 2019/2020 Chevening Research Fellow at the British Library.

A version of Yorùbá letters for the computer.

Working in the British Library collections — as Chevening British Library Fellow in the Asian and African Collections — has given me a unique insight into some issues in the orthography of Yorùbá. Having spent close to a year working with the printed materials in the language from the very first published texts to the modern day, I have as much familiarity with some of the problems as many new questions of my own. As my fellowship wraps up, I consider this an opportune time to engage with relevant stakeholders in a conversation on this subject with a view to providing direction to the future of the language. And with COVID-19 keeping everyone at home, an online conversation provides a good opportunity.

The proposed event — an online symposium on Yorùbá Orthography in the 21 ^st century — will be held on Wednesday 2 and Thursday 3 September 2020, 15.00-17.00 (details below).

Writing in Yorùbá with the computer has always been an issue. I first noticed it as an undergraduate at the university in the early 2000s, where my Microsoft Word underlined my name with a red wriggly line because it was not recognizable in English; but also when I couldn’t find the diacritics under the symbols menu to properly write the name. Yorùbá, being a tone language, uses diacritics (special symbols under and on top of vowels and some consonants) to differentiate words that have similar spellings but different meanings. (I spoke more about this problem in a recent essay on a new writing script for Igbo.)

Names in Yorùbá are given with the express purpose of couching meaning, cultural values, ambitions, prayers, and aspirations for the child, among others. If they are written in a way that doesn’t convey their meanings, perhaps because of the lack of diacritics, then their purposes have been defeated. Yet many writers have had to write Yorùbá names without diacritics, mostly for the lack of computer technological resources to write them in any other way; but also because over time, literacy in reading and writing Yorùbá also had begun to wane, leaving many to assume that the language can be written in official publications without the use of diacritics.

As an adult graduate of linguistics, I found that the issue was not limited to Yorùbá or Nigeria at all, but to many minority languages in the world, especially ones with special characters.

But there are other issues in Yorùbá orthography that are worth discussing. Since Bishop Àjàyí Crowther first wrote the language down in 1843, there have been very many changes made to the writing of Yorùbá, most notably in 1967 by Ayọ̀ Bámgbóṣé, a Professor of Linguistics. There have been others, from formal critiques and reviews to informal suggestions and creative use in literature and social media. And scholars working in the language — even writers using it in code-switching instances in their literature — have had to grapple with the many complications arising from using Yorùbá in the 21st century, not least how it is supposed to work on the web – where young writers are circumventing the old orthography with words like “oshey” or “wayray” or “jor” showing up to replace “oṣé” (thank you), “wèrè” (a mad person) and “jọ̀ọ́” (please).

That’s why the British Library, in partnership with the Lagos Studies Association and Africa Writes, is organising an online conversation to discuss these issues. It is titled:

How Should We Write Yorùbá?

A Two-session Online Symposium on Yorùbá Orthography in the 21 ^st century

(Wednesday 2 and Thursday 3 September 2020

15.00-17.00, West African and UK time).

The event brings together experts in the field to share their experience and thoughts. There will be plenty of time to discuss issues raised by our panels as well as by audience members, who we hope will come from all around the world.

The conversation will be of interest to anyone interested in Yorùbá, writing in any tonal language that uses diacritics, publishing, code-switching, language scripts, language evolution, and challenges in African language writing in the 21st century in general.

Day 1: Yorùbá: From Mission Field to Web Page

Wednesday 2 September, 15.00-17.00 West African/UK time

Day 2: Using Yorùbá Today: Literature, Leisure and the Academy

Thursday 3 September, 15.00-17.00 West African/UK time

Register here to attend.

Presenters Dr Túndé Adégbọlá (left) and Professor Karin Barber (right). (© Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún)

Confirmed speakers include:

• ● Professor Adélékè Adéẹ̀kọ́,Humanities Distinguished Professor, Ohio State University

• ● Dr Túndé Adegbọlá, Human Language Technologist, and Executive Director, African Languages Technology Initiative

• ● Mosúnmọ́lá Adéọjọ, doctoral student and Writing Instructor at the University of Florida

• ● Àrẹ̀mú Adéọlá, the Yorùbá scrabble inventor

• ● Professor Karin Barber (CBE), cultural anthropologist and academic; currently London School of Economics Centennial Professor

• ● Dr Carli Coetzee, editor of the Journal of African Cultural Studies and Research Associate, African Studies Centre, University of Oxford

• ● Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún, Nigerian linguist, creative writer and currently a Chevening British Library Fellow working in the Asian and African Collections

• ● Mọlará Wood, writer, cultural activist and critic

Host: Dr. Marion Wallace, Lead Curator, Africa, at the British Library

I look forward to seeing you there.

Kọ́lá Túbọ̀sún is a Nigerian linguist, scholar, and writer, author of Edwardsville by Heart, a collection of poetry. He is 2019/2020 Chevening Research Fellow at the British Library.