An attempt on the religious affiliation of a 15th-century Middle Kipchak translation of the Bible
67th Annual Meeting of the PIAC, Gotemba 2025
The First Firkowicz Collection at the National Library of Russia in Saint Petersburg contains a 15th-century Middle Turkic manuscript stored under the accession number Evr. I Bibl. 143. It includes a translation of a significant part of the Torah written in the Hebrew script. Two major questions regarding this source have remained unanswered for a long time. Firstly, what Turkic language is it written in and, secondly, is it a Rabbanite or Karaite work? The present author addressed this by performing a thorough comparison of the manuscript’s language with Khwarezmian Turkic, Chagatay, Middle Kipchak, Karaim and Krymchak texts, showing that it is written in Middle Kipchak. In this paper, the author also contributes to the ongoing debate about which religious and exegetical tradition it belongs to. Due to the scarcity of similar Middle Turkic linguistic materials, establishing its proper linguistic and religious affiliation opens up new prospects in the study of the history of Middle Turkic and its speakers.