During a research trip to Harvard University, Kazakhstani scholars examined seven historical acts dating from 1599 to 1742 in the Houghton Library’s MS Turk 70 collection. The documents shed light on governance in the Yarkand Khanate and East Turkestan, land relations, and the granting of tarkhan and suyurgal privileges.
The trip was organized under the program “Manuscript Heritage of Kazakhstan: Registration, Restoration, Scholarly Cataloguing, Digitization and Comprehensive Codicological Research.” The program aims to document, restore, describe and digitize manuscripts and rare books held in Kazakhstan.
The project is coordinated by the republican state enterprise Gylym Ordasy. The Khoja Ahmed Yasawi International Kazakh-Turkish University and Astana IT University are also involved. Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies is the project’s international research partner.
The delegation included six researchers from the Khoja Ahmed Yasawi International Kazakh-Turkish University and six representatives of Gylym Ordasy, including four specialists from the Central Scientific Library. They conducted archival and bibliographic research at Harvard University and the US Library of Congress.
The researchers compared 22 bibliographic records in Houghton Library’s collection related to the project and compiled a list of 70 scholarly and reference materials on documenting, cataloguing and studying historical sources. They also reviewed how Harvard libraries preserve, catalogue and digitize rare books and manuscripts.
At the From Shelves to Scholarship seminar at the Davis Center, the Kazakhstani delegation presented its findings. Azamat Nurshanov, deputy director general of Gylym Ordasy, outlined the program’s progress: as of early October 2026, 1,510 manuscripts and rare books had been digitized, and 417 rare publications in Arabic script had undergone scholarly processing.
During the visit, the participants discussed joint manuscript research, academic publications and continued exchange. The delegation was received by Mark K. Elliott, Harvard University’s vice provost for international affairs and a professor. He was presented with a collection titled “Official Documents on the History of the Jochi Ulus,” prepared by the university’s Eurasian Research Institute.
