Abstract
This article describes the Dagestani Islamic manuscripts collection of Imam Shamil’s
library, housed in Firestone Library of Princeton University in the Garrett Yahuda
Collection. It is the purpose of this paper to present a sense of the Arabic literary culture
in the Caucasian region. The material based here, on nineteen original scholarly works
of Dagestani authors from the 12th to the 19th centuries, allows us to reveal how a longstanding Islamic intellectual culture played an important role in the emergence of
original scholarly works of local authorship.
One more specific feature of the epistolary tradition that must be taken into consideration
is, that a considerable portion of Dagestan’s cultural heritage existed in the form of
Arabic and Ajamic manuscript collections that were destroyed by the Soviet regime in its
significant efforts to make the mountainous people really “unwritten” under the slogan
of fighting with imaginary nationalism and Islamic “backwardness.”
Magomed Gizbulaev. (2014) From the Caucasus to USA: Dagestani Islamic Manuscripts in Princeton University, Journal of Islamic Thought and Civilization, Volume IV , Issue 1.
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