Petrosyan Yu. The Collection of Oriental Manuscripts in the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies and its Investigation // Manuscripta Orientalia. Vol. 2. No. 3. September 1996. P. 27—37.
The foundation for the vast collection of Oriental manuscripts in the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences was established in 1818 with the foundation of the Asiatic Museum by the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences. It became a priceless treasury of knowledge, a source of information on the history and cultural heritage of the East. Among its eighty thousand manuscripts written in 65 living and dead eastern languages there are many unique and rare literary works and historical treatises which help scholars to reconstruct the events of the past and the everyday life of the Oriental peoples in the Ancient and the Medieval times…