Department of Turkology

Józef Sulimowicz (1913–1973), a Polish Karaite, Turkologist and passionate bibliophile, collected a large number of Karaite manuscripts, books and documents in his lifetime. His collection, which includes items originating from both western communities and Crimea, is the only one of its kind in Poland. However, neither an inventory list, nor a catalogue have ever been assembled for the collection. Therefore, its exact content has remained largely unknown. The present paper discusses archival materials of the Karaite community in Lutsk stored in the Sulimowicz collection. It also looks at their origin, status and their research value.

The oldest known translations of Polish literature into the Karaim language date back to the 17th century. ‎Among those poets whose works have been translated we find Jan Kochanowski and Adam Mickiewicz. ‎Another Polish author that can be read in Karaim is Maria Konopnicka. A translation of her poem Rota ‎‎(The Oath) was recently discovered in the Józef Sulimowicz manuscript collection. The translator was ‎Leon Eszwowicz, who taught religion to Karaite children in Halicz. Although his translation is not of great ‎or significant literary value, it remains an interesting example of the interest shown by Karaites in Polish ‎literature.‎

For centuries women did not play an active role in the social life of Karaite communities in Poland and Lithuania. It was not until the 1920s that a Karaite women's organisation was founded in Vilnius. Sabina Nowachowiczowa, a school teacher and one of the first Karaim women to receive a formal education, founded the Karaite Ladies' Association in Halicz in 1932. The aim of the organisation was to raise the level of its members' spiritual consciousness, educate them in the fields of faith and Karaim history and language, as well as provide them with general knowledge of the contemporary world in order to enable them to pass on traditional Karaite values to their children. The Association organised excursions, meetings to commemorate eminent Karaite figures, as well as lectures given by local scholars and invited guest speakers. The range of topics was very wide, encompassing everything from the principles of faith and notable works of Karaite literature to excavations in Egypt and the question of Crimean independence. In this paper I have analysed particular activities of the circle based on documents from Nowachowiczowa's archive.

Karaim Settlements in Villages and Farmsteads around Lutsk The Karaim community in Lutsk appears to have been widely dispersed in the 19 th century and beginning of the 20 th , with its members living not only in the town of Lutsk and its surroundings, but also in relatively distant villages and farmsteads. A list of the settlements where Karaims once resided was published in 1933 by Aleksander Mardkowicz. It contains 40 names that the Karaim activist found in old documents. Among those documents there are five 19 th and 20 th century Karaim letters in Hebrew script edited by Németh and a list – still unpublished – of community members living outside Lutsk around 1845. However, those documents include a few toponyms not registered by Mardkowicz. The presence of Karaims in numerous villages and farmsteads is also recorded in public records from 1871-1914. Based on the data from the death register the number of villages with Karaim inhabitants should be increased up to 80. The paper discusses the above-mentioned sources and their use in creating not only an exact map of Karaim settlements around Lutsk, but also in tracing family relations and migrations of the Lutsk Karaim population.

This paper provides a brief review of the manuscripts originating from the Crimea and constituting a part of the collection of Karaite manuscripts assembled in the 1950s and 1960s by the Turkologist Józef Sulimowicz. An inventory list that is currently being compiled comprises 96 such items. However, this number may change as in many cases no precise information on their provenance is available and it will require a more detailed analysis to determine the origin of some of the documents. This part of the collection includes manuscripts with a religious and secular content, written in Karaim and in Hebrew. As far as the Karaim manuscripts are concerned, the mejumas, i.e. collections of popular literature, and a 17 th century translation of the Bible are particularly worthy of attention. The physical condition of the manuscripts is not infrequently poor since they might have been stored in lofts or basements before they came into the hands of Józef Sulimowicz. In 2012 the Association of Polish Karaims launched a project to restore and preserve Karaim manuscripts. Financed by the Ministry of Culture and National Heritage of Poland the project made it possible to complete the conservation of the twenty most valuable items in the collection, including the above-mentioned Bible translation. In 2015 two other Crimean manuscripts are due to undergo restoration and subsequently digitalization, which will make them accessible to researchers.

The Karaite prayer house in Lutsk was first mentioned in a letter of Sigismund I dated 22 December ‎‎1506. In the first half of the 17th century the Karaite community made efforts to obtain permission ‎from Sigismund III Vasa to construct stone building in place of the existing wooden one. However, ‎the Karaites were refused. In 1633 Sigismund III’s successor, Ladislaus IV acknowledged their right ‎to possess a wooden prayer house. In the 18th century the building was at least twice devoured by ‎fire. In 1915 this historical edifice was ransacked by Austrian troops. In the paper an attempt to ‎establish the kind of its furnishings is made based on two relations of 1821 and 1908 and an ‎inventory list of 1883. ‎

Following the annexation of Crimea by the Bolsheviks, traditional Karaim folklore found itself endangered ‎by the ongoing process of Sovietisation which intensified after WWII and the deportations of the Crimean ‎Tatars. In response to a request from Józef Sulimowicz, a Polish collector of Caraimica, in the early 1960s, ‎Yosif Kefeli (1900–1976), a Karaim from Simferopol, started to write down or copy various works of ‎Crimean Karaim popular literature. He filled a few copybooks with popular songs, poems and proverbs as ‎well as with theatre plays penned by Karaim dramatists such as A.O. Levi and A.I. Katyk. Written in the ‎Cyrillic alphabet, Kefeli’s copybooks today constitute a part of Sulimowicz’s collection of Karaim ‎manuscripts. The present article provides a review of the content of these manuscripts, with particular ‎attention paid to those works, which may be regarded as manifestations of the Karaim folklore that was ‎still alive at the time.‎

This article presents the contents of two handwritten documents. The first document dates from ‎‎1813 and concerns the power of attorney granted by the Troki community to Joachim Łabanos, the ‎son of the last voyt (shofet) of the Troki Karaim so that the latter may represent the community ‎before the courts and the authorities. It may be regarded as an attempt to restore to a certain extent ‎the position of the voyt who after the partition of Poland had been deprived of those prerogatives ‎granted to him by the Grand Dukes of Lithuania and the Kings of Poland. However, three years later ‎the power of attorney was revoked  and the blank pages of this document were reused to draw up a ‎lawsuit filed by Łabanos against Judith and Joseph Firkowicz, Abraham Kobiecki and Joseph ‎Kobiecki. Łabanos demanded compensation for expenditure he had incurred on his son Elias’ future ‎marriage to Abraham Kobiecki’s daughter, Judith who instead of marrying the young Łabanos ran ‎away with Joseph Firkowicz. These documents shed some light on the position of the Łabanos ‎family after it lost its leading role in the Troki Karaim community.‎

Among the various documents preserved in the community’s archives is a handwritten list containing the names, properties and professions of the Lutsk Karaites. Compiled in 1854, it provides data about various economic and social aspects of the community’s life in the mid-19th century. It is also a valuable source of information on anthroponomy and genealogy. In the article, the content of the manuscript is presented, as well as additional information obtained through a comparison with other sources.

The article provides a review of six versions of a song Sıçan (‘Mouse’) which can be found in the mejumas, i.e. Crimean Karaim collections of popular literature, together with an edition of three hitherto unpublished versions. This humorous ditty describes the damage caused by a malicious rodent. The oldest version can be dated precisely to 1864, while the latest appeared in 1964. The many differences in the sequence of stanzas, motifs and their details indicate that the content of the mejumas was most probably not transcribed (copied from one manuscript to another), but rather constitutes a written record of an oral performance either heard directly or based on memory. Striking similarities between the Crimean Karaim variants and the Crimean Tatar ones, as well as variants found in the popular repertoire of Anatolia and Balkans, especially the version recorded by I. Kúnos in 1880s, suggests that this particular song originates from Turkey and it appears very likely that Karaims who maintained particularly close religious, economic and also family ties with their co-believers in Istanbul may have been responsible for “importing” it from Turkey to Crimea.

A handwritten document from the 1830s containing a scheme of the distribution of seats in the Karaite prayer house in Halicz provides us with information on the inner hierarchy among members of the local community. It appears that 150 years after two scholars from Derazhno in Volhynia, Yosef ben Shemuel and his brother Yeshu'a, arrived to Halicz in order to restore religious practices there, their descendants still occupied the highest positions in the community. The document, which apparently was related to the reconstruction of the kenesa after a destructive fire, provokes questions about the existence of a caste of priests among the Karaites in Poland and Lithuania.

A handwritten collection of Karaim proverbs and adages in
North-Western Karaim found in the archive of
Aleksander Mardkowicz

The private archive of Aleksander Mardkowicz (1875–
1944), a Łuck Karaite activist, writer and editor, includes a manuscript
written in the north-western dialect of Karaim, which contains
8 proverbs and a didactical-moralistic text copied from an unknown
source. It was drawn up most probably in the early 1930s by Rafał
Grygulewicz (1905–1992), a Karaite youth activist from Poniewież
(Panevežys) who in response to Mardkowicz’s call to collect Karaim
proverbs and sayings gathered some material and sent it to Lutsk.
The paper contains a critical edition of the manuscript augmented
with a translation, glossary and facsimile. There is also biographical
information on the copyist provided.

: In the 19th century a significant part of the Karaite population of Lutsk lived not in the town itself but in surrounding villages
and farmsteads. A document from 1824 found in the community’s
archive, namely a draft of a petition of two leaseholders from the
Mokowicze village, sheds some new light on the economic situation
of the Lutsk Karaites. It also makes possible to supplement the list
of villages where their presence has been documented.