On October 16 and 17 the First Scientific Practical Conference “The Problems of Arabic Manuscript Heritage Studying, Description and Catalogisation” was held in Saint Petersburg with the assistance of Ibn Sina Foundation. The event took place at the building of the Russian National Library.
The conference was opened with a welcome speech by the General Director of the Russian National Library D.O. Tsypkin and the Scientific Director of Ibn Sina Foundation A.A. Lukashev. They pointed to the special importance of studying manuscripts in a digital epoch, as well as of creating additional conditions for their preservation and publishing its research results.
More than 20 specialists from Russia (Saint Petersburg, Moscow, Kazan), Iran, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan spoke at the conference. Reports were dedicated to the history of Oriental manuscripts formation and catalogisation; codicological, textological and source studies of manuscript collections; sharing experience in the area of creating manuscripts data bases and electronic catalogues of Arabic manuscripts collections in Russia and abroad.
The representative of Ibn Sina Foundation Ahmad Ranjbari Haidarbaghi also spoke at the conference. He told about Foundation’s projects aimed to the suppot of manuscripts studies and its popularization. Particularly, it is accomplished by holding open lectures in the framework of LectOrient project; publishing books dedicated to manuscripts; creating the film “Written Heritage”. After that A. Ranjbari Haidarbaghi delivered a report dedicated to identifying Safavid era manuscripts.
The First Scientific Practical Conference “The Problems of Arabic Manuscript Heritage Studying, Description and Catalogisation” was organized by the Centre of Oriental Studies of the Russian National Library and Ibn Sina Foundation.
