E. Rezvan. Russian Poet and Harari Booklore. V. Amulets

Efim Rezvan

Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (the Kunstkamera) RAS,
St. Petersburg, Russia
E-mail: efim.rezvan@mail.ru 

Russian Poet and Harari Booklore. V. Amulets 

Abstract. St. Petersburg's academic institutions house a collection of manuscripts, bindings, items related to bookcraft, and amulets brought back from Abyssinia by Nikolai Gumilev (1886—1921), one of the most celebrated Russian poets of the 20th century, an indefatigable traveller, and a courageous cavalry officer. The collection resulted from an expedition to the Muslim regions of Abyssinia, organised by the Kunstkamera Museum in 1913. Most of the items pertain to the city of Harar, which played a pivotal role in the spread of Islam, not only in north-eastern Ethiopia but also across the Horn of Africa. In 2008 and 2010, new expeditions by the Museum retraced Gumilev's routes. This article is the last in the series dedicated to the study of his collection. It examines the various amulets the poet brought to Russia. 

Keywords: Nikolai Gumilev, amulets, Islamic manuscripts, Jijiga, Harar, Ethiopia, the Kunstkamera Museum, the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts RAS, the Anna Akhmatova Museum at the Fountain House 

Acknowledgments. The series would not have been possible without the generous support of Denis Nosnitsin, Eugeniy Stepanov, Munzir al-Bosh (Syria) and Alessandro Gori (Italy). I am sincerely grateful to Olga Zhmur for her wonderful drawings of manuscript bindings and their decorative elements, and for her highly professional comments on them. I am very grateful for the kind assistance of my colleagues at the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Anna Akhmatova Literary and Memorial Museum in St. Petersburg, who provided me with copies of manuscripts from their collections. The series and the research on which it is based were carried out as part of the programme “Ethnic History and Diversity of the Cultural Heritage of the Islamic World in Historical Dynamics”, supervised by the interdisciplinary laboratory “International Centre for Islamic Studies” of the MAE RAS. 

DOI: 10.31250/1238-5018-2025-31-2-63-71 

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Received by the Editorial Board: 09.09.2024