37.1876, Reviews: Фрагменты талышской речи I (Рукописи из коллекции Б.А.Дорна) - Manuscripts from the collection of B.A. Dorn: Igbal Abilov (ed.) (2025)

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Subject: 37.1876, Reviews: Фрагменты талышской речи I (Рукописи из коллекции Б.А.Дорна) -  Manuscripts from the collection of B.A. Dorn: Igbal Abilov (ed.) (2025)

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Date: 05-Apr-2026
From: Francisco Garcia Sanchis [frangarcia918 at gmail.com]
Subject: Language Documentation: Igbal Abilov (ed.) (2025)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/36-3247

Title: Фрагменты талышской речи I (Рукописи из коллекции Б.А.Дорна) -
Manuscripts from the collection of B.A. Dorn
Series Title: Bibliotheca Talyshica 01
Publication Year: 2025

Publisher: Lincom GmbH
           https://lincom-shop.eu/
Book URL:
https://lincom-shop.eu/epages/57709feb-b889-4707-b2ce-c666fc88085d.sf/de_DE/?ObjectPath=/Shops/57709feb-b889-4707-b2ce-c666fc88085d/Products/%22ISBN%209783969392515%22

Editor(s): Igbal Abilov

Reviewer: Francisco Garcia Sanchis

SUMMARY
Published in July 2025 by LINCOM GmbH, ФРАГМЕНТЫ ТАЛЫШСКОЙ РЕЧИ I
(English: Fragments of Talysh Dialect I) is a substantial 590-page
volume compiled and edited by Talysh researcher Igbal Abilov. Serving
as the inaugural publication of the Bibliotheca Talyshica series—an
initiative of the Talysh National Academy based in Riga—the book
undertakes what its editor describes as an act of "scientific
repatriation": the recovery and scholarly presentation of culturally
significant materials that have long remained inaccessible to the
communities to which they belong. In this case, the core manuscripts
had been preserved but unpublished in the archives of the Russian
Academy of Sciences for over 160 years.
The materials originate from the expeditions of Boris (Bernhard) A.
Dorn (1805–1881), a German-Russian orientalist who traveled through
the South Caspian regions (covering parts of modern-day Azerbaijan and
Iran) between 1860 and 1861. While Dorn's published work on languages
such as Mazanderani and Gilaki gained recognition during his lifetime,
his notebooks containing research on the Northern dialect of
Talysh—spoken in the Lankaran-Astara region of what is now the
Republic of Azerbaijan—remained in archival obscurity. Igbal Abilov
discovered these manuscripts in 2012 and subsequently devoted over a
decade to analyzing them.
The volume functions as a linguistic "time capsule," preserving the
Northern Talysh dialect before the intensive dialect leveling and
lexical borrowing from Azerbaijani and Russian that characterized the
20th century. Its contents include poetic fragments that Abilov
identifies as possibly predating the 19th century, making them among
the oldest documented examples of Talysh literature. A significant
discovery is a 19th-century Talysh translation of the Kanz al-Asrar
("Treasure of Secrets"), originally composed in Mazanderani, which
demonstrates historical literary exchange between Caspian-speaking
communities. The book also features a historical Russian-Talysh
dictionary compiled with Dorn's participation, as well as Dorn's
ethnographic field notes and travel logs documenting the social
structures and daily lives of the Talysh people during the Imperial
Russian era. The text is primarily in Russian, with Talysh fragments
presented in both original transcription and modern phonetic analysis.
EVALUATION
Abilov's volume represents a landmark contribution to Iranian
linguistics, specifically to the documentation and historical study of
the Talysh language. The framing concept of "scientific repatriation"
is particularly apt and gives the work a coherence that extends beyond
mere archival publication. The notion that materials can be physically
preserved yet culturally inaccessible—locked away in metropolitan
archives far from the communities whose heritage they
represent—resonates with ongoing discussions in linguistics and
anthropology about the politics of knowledge and the ethics of
cultural heritage. By bringing these manuscripts back into
circulation, Abilov has performed a service not only to scholarship
but also to the Talysh community's relationship with its own
linguistic past. This dual audience—academic specialists and the
heritage community—is kept in view throughout the volume, most notably
in the decision to present Talysh materials in both original and
modernized transcriptions.
The recovery of Dorn's Talysh materials fills a significant gap in the
history of Caspian language documentation. Dorn's published work on
Mazanderani and Gilaki has long been available to scholars, but the
absence of comparable materials for Talysh created an imbalance in the
historical record. Abilov's discovery and careful transcription of
these notebooks now allow Talysh to take its place alongside its
sister languages in the documented history of 19th-century Iranian
linguistics. The decade-long effort required to decipher, transcribe,
and contextualize these handwritten materials—produced under field
conditions by a non-native observer—should not be underestimated.
Abilov's success in this regard speaks to his deep familiarity with
both the Talysh language and the scholarly traditions within which
Dorn worked.
The volume's primary scholarly contribution lies in its provision of a
substantial, reliably transcribed corpus of 19th-century Northern
Talysh. For linguists working on Iranian languages, this material is
invaluable for several reasons. First, it establishes a baseline
against which subsequent changes in the language can be measured. The
phonological, morphological, and lexical features preserved in Dorn's
notebooks offer a reference point for understanding the trajectory of
language change over the past 150 years—a period during which the
Northern dialect has been in intensive contact with Azerbaijani and,
more recently, Russian. Second, the dual presentation of materials
(original transcription alongside modern phonetic interpretation)
facilitates diachronic analysis while maintaining transparency about
the interpretive decisions involved. Third, the variety of text types
represented—poetry, prose translation, lexical lists, ethnographic
narrative—provides a richer basis for linguistic analysis than a
single genre would allow.
The identification of poetic fragments possibly predating the 19th
century, together with the Talysh translation of the Kanz al-Asrar,
opens new avenues for research into Talysh literary history. These
findings challenge any assumption that written literary expression in
Talysh is a recent or marginal phenomenon. Instead, they suggest a
more complex history of literary activity, including translation and
perhaps original composition, that has left only scattered traces in
the archival record. The Kanz al-Asrar translation is particularly
significant for what it reveals about inter-linguistic relationships
in the Caspian region. The fact that a Mazandarani
religious-philosophical text was rendered into Talysh in the 19th
century implies the existence of readerships or audiences capable of
appreciating such works in both languages, and suggests networks of
intellectual exchange that merit further investigation. Abilov's
publication of these materials makes such investigation possible for
the first time.
The inclusion of Dorn's field notes and travel logs adds an important
interdisciplinary dimension to the volume. These writings provide
contextual information that enriches the purely linguistic data. They
document social structures, economic activities, religious practices,
and interpersonal relationships among the 19th-century Talysh
population, offering a glimpse of the world in which the language was
embedded. For historians and anthropologists of the South Caspian
region, this material has independent value as a primary source on
local society during the Imperial Russian period. The combination of
linguistic and ethnographic documentation in a single volume reflects
a holistic approach to language documentation that was characteristic
of 19th-century Oriental scholarship and that remains valuable today.
The Russian-Talysh dictionary compiled with Dorn's participation
constitutes a major resource for historical lexicography. As
apparently the earliest known dictionary of its kind, it provides
unique evidence for the 19th-century Talysh lexicon. Beyond its value
for tracking lexical change, the dictionary also reflects the material
culture and social categories of its time through the vocabulary it
records. Terms for tools, occupations, social roles, and natural
phenomena are preserved here in a form that predates the massive
lexical influence of Azerbaijani and Russian in the 20th century. For
scholars interested in lexical reconstruction or in the history of
material culture in the region, this dictionary will be an essential
reference.
The decision to publish with LINCOM GmbH, a press well regarded in the
field of linguistic monograph publication, ensures that the volume
meets academic production standards and reaches the appropriate
scholarly audience. The book is primarily in Russian, which makes it
accessible to scholars across the post-Soviet space and to
international specialists in Iranian linguistics who typically read
Russian as a scholarly language. The presentation of Talysh materials
in both original and modernized forms strikes a reasonable balance
between historical fidelity and contemporary usability. The volume is
substantial (590 pages) without being unwieldy, suggesting careful
editorial judgment about what to include and what to reserve for
future publications.
This volume will be essential reading for specialists in Iranian
linguistics, particularly those working on the Caspian language group.
It should also find an audience among historical linguists interested
in language change and documentary linguistics, lexicographers working
with historical materials, and scholars of 19th-century Oriental
studies. The ethnographic content makes it relevant to anthropologists
and historians of the South Caspian region.
The access to this primary sources is conditioned by the use of the
Perso-Arabic orthography; nevertheless, the full vocalization of these
texts provides an essential phonetic guide, thereby streamlining the
process of transliteration and semantic analysis for the researcher
In sum, Fragments of Talysh Dialects I is a meticulously prepared and
conceptually coherent volume that makes a lasting contribution to
Iranian linguistics and to the preservation of Talysh cultural
heritage. Igbal Abilov has succeeded in recovering materials that were
effectively lost, presenting them in a form that serves both
specialist scholarship and the broader goal of cultural repatriation.
The volume sets a high standard for the Bibliotheca Talyshica series
and establishes a foundation for future research on the Talysh
language and its history. It ensures that the voice of 19th-century
Talysh speakers, preserved in Dorn's notebooks, will now be heard by
scholars and community members alike for generations to come.
ABOUT THE REVIEWER
Francisco Garcia Sanchis is a PhD’s student at the Universitat de
València, specializing in Classical Studies and Linguistic Typology.
He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Classics and a Master’s Degree in
Linguistic Typology. His research interests include Linguistic
Typology, Classical Languages, and Caucasian Languages.



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