Azerbaijan people have rich and ancient cultural traditions and have contributed extensively to the world brilliant masterpieces of artistic, philosophical and scientific thought. This cultural heritage is known not only in Azerbaijan, but also all over the world. Since antiquity, there were large libraries in Azerbaijan. The Institute of manuscripts of the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences has a collection of 453 medical manuscripts, dating from the IX century. Seventy three manuscripts were written in Arabic, sixty ones – in Turkic (Azeri and Ottoman Turkish) and three thousand twenty ones - in Persian languages. In 29 July 2005 UNESCO officially included three medieval medical manuscripts from the Institute of Manuscripts of Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences into the register of the Memory of the World Program which includes the most unique and irreplaceable written monuments of the humankind. The Certificate confirming this decision was presented to the Institute of Manuscripts by Dr. Matsuura, the head of UNESCO. One of them oldest copies of the second volume of “Canon of Medicine” (1030) by Ibn Sina, know in the West as Avicenna (980-1037). Second book is “Zakhira-I Nizamshahi” was written in the XIII century by the famous Central Asian author Zeynaddin Ibn Abu Ibrahim Jurjani. The manuscripts are unique and not found in other manuscripts deposits in the world. The third book is “al-Maqalatun Salasun” by Abulkasim Zakhravı. One of the rarest and most ancient manuscripts of this book in the World. Ancient manuscripts, being a unique invention of mankind, had an impact on the entire history in general and on medicine in particular.
Laboratory of Photochemistry of Chloroplasts, Institute of Molecular Biology & Biotechnologies, Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences