At the 3rd International Scientific and Educational Conference “Heritage of Muslim theologians in strengthening spiritual and moral values and civic identity” in Makhachkala, Director of the Restoration and Digitization Laboratory of the Centre of Islamic Heritage of the Bolgar Islamic Academy, Shamil Sharafutdinov, spoke about modern methods of restoration of Muslim manuscripts and book monuments in the Academy’s laboratory.
Shamil Sharafutdinov made a report at the section “Spiritual heritage of Muslim scholars of theology in the system of traditions and continuity of cultures”.
“Today the Academy’s collection has 273 manuscripts of the 15th-20th centuries on Islamic subjects, Arabic, Turkic-Tatar, Persian linguistics in Arabic, old Tatar and Persian. The collection of rare books and old printed books is about 750 units. It includes editions on various fields of science: mathematics, botany, astronomy, philosophy, pharmacology, medicine and music. These are mainly works by Arab-Muslim scholars, translated into European languages”, notes the director of the Academy’s restoration and digitization laboratory.
The speaker dwelled in more detail on how the process of restoration of rare and valuable Muslim manuscripts and book monuments goes, what is the main emphasis in the work, what tools and modern technologies are used for restoration.
Shamil Sharafutdinov also spoke about joint projects with scientific and educational organizations in the field of restoration and digitization of ancient books and manuscripts. So, together with the Institute of History, Language and Literature of Ufa Federal Research Center of Russian Academy of Sciences a project was implemented to prepare an academic edition of the USSR Mufti Riza Fakhreddinov (1859 – 1936) work “Islam Dine”. For a number of reasons, the work remained unpublished at one time and was kept in a manuscript version (the original manuscript versions are now in the UFRC RAS research archive). At the moment the layout of the book is completed and the advance copies have already been published.
As part of the agreement concluded in 2019. the Republic of Tatarstan and the Bolgar Islamic Academy prepared for academic publication a large fundamental work in three volumes by the famous Bolgar scholar and theologian of the second half of the XII century Suleiman ibn-Daud as-Saksini-Suwari “Zuhrat ar-riyad va nuzkhat al-kulub al-miraad” (“The beauty of gardens and consolation of suffering hearts”), which is expected to be published this year, the year of celebration of the 1,100th anniversary of the adoption of Islam by the Volga Bulgars.
In conclusion, Shamil Sharafutdinov noted that preserving the historical and cultural heritage of the peoples of Russia is one of the main tasks of the society and the state while the process of restoration is a responsible and hard work.