ENU hosted a round table discussion "Medieval Kazakhstan: New Research and New Challenges"

A round table discussion "Medieval Kazakhstan: New Research and New Challenges" was held at the Eurasian National University.

The event was attended by the Chairman of the ENU Board of Directors Zhaksybek Kulekeyev, Rector of ENU Yerlan Sydykov, well-known leading historians of Kazakhstan, representatives of scientific institutes, university professors, bachelor’s, master’s and and doctoral students.

The main purpose of the event was to discuss issues of new research and understanding of national history, raise new problems, as well as make suggestions regarding the accurate analysis of historical sources about medieval Kazakhstan, their authenticity and consistency, - Dean of ENU Faculty of Historical Omirbai Bekmagambetov said.   

"There are many unexplored sides to national history. In addition, foreign archives contain a lot of undeveloped information about our history. It is very important to find them, translate them and introduce them into science. Because, in the conditions of the New Kazakhstan, there is an opportunity to master and explore history in a new way. The Head of State K.Tokayev pays special attention to our history and supports the issue of proper assessment of historical events that determined the fate of our people," ENU Rector, moderator of the event Yerlan Sydykov saif.

During the round table discussions, scientists made presentations on the topic "Future Tasks of Scientific Centers", "Responsibilities of Historical Oriental Studies in Kazakhstan", "The Value of Manuscripts and Rare Books for National History", "Issues of Using Arabic-Persian Sources in Teaching the History of KAZAKHSTAN in Universities", "Genghis Studies and Juche Studies in Modern Historiography".

"I am not a historian, but I take care of the national history. It's not that easy to explore medieval history. To do this, we need to find a lot of historical manuscripts that are located outside our country. We need to investigate them and translate the most reliable ones. This requires citizens who speak Persian, Arabic, Ancient Turkic, and Chagatai languages. In every state, those who achieve great achievements and make new discoveries are the youth. Therefore, if we send our young master’s and doctoral students, we will make up for the losses in history," Zhaksybek Kulekeyev said.

Danagul Makhat, director of the ENU scientific center "Otyrar Kitapkhanasy", told about the history of the formation, the goals of the institute, about reading manuscripts on Kazakh history and spirituality. Zhaksylyk Sabitov, Director of the Zhoshy Ulys Research Institute, Zhandos Boldykov, Director of the National Center for Manuscripts and Rare Books, and other scientists discussed the topic of the round table, voiced new visions and raised the issue from the scientific and theoretical side.

 Following the results of the event, the participants proposed to create a group of specialists who will be able to translate the original ancient records in Arabic-Persian, Hansu and Mungyl languages for another analysis of foreign archival documents in order to conduct a historiographical study of the Kazakh history of the III-XVIII centuries; to create a research center "History of Medieval Kazakhstan" at ENU for collection, translation and implementation to science of sources concerning the history of medieval Kazakhstan.