Pis'mennye pamiatniki Vostoka

The article presents a part of a Russian translation (with an introduction and commentaries) of the valuable treatise: Dalīl al-mutaḥayyirīn (“A Guide for the Perplexed”) by Sayyid Kazim Rashti, one of the founders of the Shaykhi school. The work is dated 1842. The translation is made from the Arabic original and two Persian translations of the treatise.

The article presents a classification and analysis of references to dreams in the Memorabilia of the Three Kingdoms (Samguk yusa)—an extensive systematized collection of materials on the history of Korea from ancient times to the end of the 13th century, which was composed by the Korean Buddhist monk Iryeon (1206–1289). According to the functions of these references in the text and to the degree of their exposure to Buddhist influence, they are classified into two groups: “figurative dreams”, graphically and unambiguously predicting inevitable future events, and “dreams-conversations”, in which supernatural beings seek to influence the behavior of the hero. These two groups are further subdivided into several subgroups, among which special attention is paid to the stories about interactions between human beings and the characters of the Buddhist pantheon. On the basis of the Buddhist canon, it is suggested that the Buddhist concept of correlation between the way of such an interaction (in a dream or in reality) and the degree of spiritual maturity of the practitioner is superimposed here on the universal scheme of “prophetic dreams”.

The paper presents some observations on the special characteristics of two signs used in the Oirat Clear Script alphabet—two additional graphemes that imitate the Tibetan subscripts ya (yatag) and wa (wazur). These two signs are unique because they transfer the principle of Tibetan orthography into Clear Script: if a syllable contains the vowel a, it is not marked in writing. Although the two signs that imitate yatag and wazur are consistently used in Clear Script and can be found in most texts of Buddhist content, in academic publications they are often overlooked and not marked in transliteration, which can lead to inaccurate interpretations of certain words. This paper justifies the necessity of employing special symbols to distinguish these signs in transliteration, and offers examples showing the use of yatag and wazur in seventeenth-century manuscripts, which allows one to trace their history back to the very first decades of the existence of the Clear Script alphabet.

The article presents the characteristic of the unfinished and unpublished work Travel Sketches: “A Tourist’s Notes” by Sh.M. Ibragimov (1841–1891), housed at the Archives of the Orientalists of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Ф. 33. Оп. 1. Ед. хр. 225). The authors attempt to show the value of “A Tourist’s Notes” as a source on the history, historical geography and ethnography of the Turkestan Region. The text of the “Notes” also contains information about some aspects of Russian politics in Central Asia and its perception by the local population. It was prepared by a very competent, well-educated and very observant author, a member of the Russian imperial administration in Turkestan. At the same time, due to his ethnic background and religious affiliation, the author was close to the local population. The article describes Sh.M. Ibragimov as a statesman and Orientalist, analyzes his role in the history of Russian Turkestan and Russia’s relations with the Islamic world in general, as well as his contribution to the Russian Oriental studies.

The XVIII century, being a significant watershed in the more than two thousand-year history of nomads, was marked by the financial incorporation of all nomadic ethnopolitical formations of Eurasia into the sedentary agricultural empires.

Alexey Dmitrievich Makarov's article is the second part of his research devoted to one of the topical issues of the present time - the confessional affiliation of the Rev. Isaac the Syrian.

In 2022, it will be 95 years since the birth and seven years after the passing of the public figure, teacher and thinker, author of fundamental works, Honored Scientist, Doctor of Philology, Professor Hasan Ibrahim-oglu Mirzoev.

On March 7, 2022, Novosibirsk Akademgorodok said goodbye to the Siberian Manchurian historian Lyudmila Vasilevna Tyuryumina, who died of complications after covid.