Back in
December of 2010, I wrote about the Kadiaskerskie Books and their importance to
our library (see http://crimeantatarlibrary.blogspot.com/2010/12/kadiaskerskie-books.html).
To recap
from that blog post, the Kadiaskerskie Books are the court records of the
“chief judges” (the Kadi Asker) of the Crimean Khanate, which was the ruling
body of Crimea from 1440-1783. They contain the most comprehensive historical
record of Crimean Tatar life on the peninsula, including records of civil and
criminal court proceedings, spiritual testimonies, the execution of wills, and
the costs of public works and buildings.
Many of
them were destroyed in a 1738 fire in the Khan’s palace, but a number survived
and were eventually transferred to the National Library of Russia (NLR) in St.
Petersburg. In 1926, the National Library of Russia gave a copy of the
Kadiaskerskie Books to the Crimean History Museum in Crimea. Eventually, those
too were partially destroyed after the Crimean Tatar Deportation by a zealous
museum guard looking for stove fuel. But half of the original copies were saved
and eventually transferred to the Gasprinskiy Library after it was established
in 1991. Because of the tremendous value of the Kadiaskerskie Books in
reconstructing Crimean Tatar daily life under the Crimean Khanate, the
Gasprinsky Library has long sought to complete their collection of copies of
the Books.
As I wrote
in the original blog, purchasing copies of the missing Kadiaskerskie Books from
the NLR was one of the original goals of our Partnership grant. However, my
many inquiries to the NLR about the possibility of obtaining copies and their
cost went unanswered. Eventually, we chose to focus the grant on obtaining
copies of Ismail Gasprinskiy’s Terdjiman newspaper (see http://crimeantatarlibrary.blogspot.com/2012_10_01_archive.html).
We asked
our friend Renat Abibulaev, who helped us obtain the copies of Terdjiman, to
inquire at the NLR about the cost of copies of the Kadiaskerskie Books.
Recently he told us the answer he received from the NLR: $46,000! An
astronomical sum to a library such as Gasprinksy and most likely, never
obtainable.
Which begs
the question, why doesn’t the National Library of Russia give a copy of
the needed Kadiaskerskie Books to the Gasprinskiy Library? At some point in its history, the NLR did give
a copy of all of the Kadiaskerskie Books to Crimea, their rightful home, but ignorance
and prejudice led to the partial destruction of those copies. Surely a library
with an annual budget in excess of $23 million could make an effort to remedy
this situation? The Crimean Tatars have returned to Crimea, they have re-established
their home here and begun to collect their literature and history scattered
across the world. The Kadiaskerskie Books are crucial to that history and
having a complete collection of copies of the Books is essential to the
establishment of the Gasprinskiy Crimean Tatar Library as the true home of the
Crimean Tatar culture.
If you are
interested in supporting this proposal, please consider sending a letter to the
Director General of the National Library of Russia, Anton Likhomanov,
a.likhomanov@nir.ru.
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