Vol. 1 No 3 December 1995

Manuscripta Orientalia. International Journal for Oriental Manuscript Research.

CONTENTS

TEXTS AND MANUSCRIPTS: DESCRIPTION AND RESEARCH - 3   L. Menshikov. A Fragment of an Unknown Leishu from Tunhuang - 3 T.Sultanov. The Structure of Islamic History Book (The Method of Analysis) - 16     TO THE HISTORY OF ORIENTAL TEXTOLOGY - 22   K. Kepping. The Official Name of the Tangut Empire as Reflected in the Native Tangut Texts - 22     PRESENTING THE COLLECTIONS - 33   T. Pang. Rare Manchu Manuscripts from the Collection of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences - 33     ORIENTAL MANUSCRIPTS AND NEW INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES Correspondence Round table: Arabic/Farsi OCR - 47   A. Matveev. Sakhr Bilingual OCR (Al-Qari' al-Ali). A User's Initial Impressions - 48 J. Bell & P. Zemanek. Test of Two Arabic OCR Programs - 55 P. Roochnik. Itisalat OCR Discussion - 58     PRESENTING THE MANUSCRIPT - 63     O. Akimushkin. Muraqqa‘. Album of the Indian and Persian Miniatures of the 16-18th Centuries and the Models оf the Persian Calligraphy оf the Same Period - 63      BOOK AND SOFTWARE REVIEW - 68     ‘Aja'ib ad-Dunya (Chudesa mira). Kriticheskiĭ tekst, perevod s persidskogo, vvedenie, kommentariĭ i ukazateli L. P. Smirnovoĭ. Moskva: Nauka, 1993, 540 str. - Pamiatniki pis'mennosti Vostoka, LXXXIII. ‘Aja'ib ad-Dunya (Wonders of the World). Critical text, Russian translation from Persian, introduction, commentary and indices by L. P. Smirnova. Moscow: Nauka Publishing House, 1993, 540 pp. - Literary Monuments of the Orient, LXXXIII. by F. Abdullaeva - 68 Avesta. Izbrannye gimny iz Videvdata. Perevod s avestiĭskogo Ivana Steblin-Kamenskogo. Moskva, 1993, 207 str. Avesta. Selected Hymns from Videvdat. Russian translation from Avestan by I. Steblin-Kamensky. Moscow, 1993, 207 pp. by F. Abdullaeva - 68 Adobe Acrobat 2.0 as a medium for electronic publishing in Arabic studies (Windows version) by J. Bell - 69

AUTHORS

Dr. Firuza I. Abdullaeva - Professor of Persian at the Oriental faculty of the St. Petersburg State University, specialist in the Iranian Philology and Islamic culture. Author of a series of works in the field.

Prof. Dr. Oleg F. Akimushkin - Head of the Dpt. of the Middle East and Group of the Kurdish studies of the St Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, specialist in the history of Persian culture, history of Iran, Central Asia and Eastern Turkestan, author of a series of monographs and articles.

Prof. Joseph N. Bell - Professor of Arabic and Head of Section for Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway. Specialist in Muslim intellectual history and Sufism. Author of several books and a series of articles in the field.

Dr. Ksenia B. Kepping - Senior Researcher of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, specialist in Tangut language and culture, author of a series of monographs and articles.

Mr. Alexander S. Matveev - post graduate student of the Oriental Faculty of St. Petersburg State University and special student of Prof. Joseph Bell from University of Bergen. Specializes in Arabic medieval history, author of several articles in the field.

Prof. Dr. Lev N. Menshikov - Head of the Group of Far Eastern Textology of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, specialist in the history of Chinese literature and culture, founder of Russian school of Dunhuang studies and author of a series of monographs and articles.

Dr. Tatiana Pang - Researcher of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, author of a series of works devoted to the Manchu manuscript heritage, culture and philology.

Dr. Efim A. Rezvan - Research Director of the St Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, specialist in Arabic and Islamic studies, author of the monographs and series of articles devoted to the history of the Russian-arabic relations, history of Islam and computer approaches in the field.

Dr. Paul Roochnik - Arabic Computational Linguist at Applications Technology (AppTek) Inc., McLean, Virginia, USA. Founder and moderator of ITISALAT, the Internet Forum on Arabic Computing. Co-founder and secretary of The Association for Arabic Computing in North America. Specialist in Arabic Machine Translation. Author of a series of articles on the computerized parsing of Arabic sentences as well as a series of articles on the computerized treatment of Arabic personal names.

Dr. Tursun I. Sultanov - Senior Researcher of the St. Petersburg Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, specialist in medieval handwritten tradition and culture of Turkish peoples, author of the monographs and series of articles in the field.

Dr. Petr Zemanek - Deputy Head, Institute of Ancient Near Eastern Studies, Charles University, Prague, Czech Republic. Specializes in Arabic and Semitic linguistics, especially in phonology, and computer-aided analysis of Arabic and other Semitic languages.