The delegation of the Ministry of Culture of Azerbaijan visited the Federal Republic of Germany. On June 21, they visited the Dresden State and University Library, where they were informed about its historical background and activities.
After that, they held talks with the management of the library on the prospects of cooperation. The delegation also examined a handwritten copy of the epos "Kitabi-Dada Gorgud," a remarkable cultural and literary relic of the Turkic world, which is kept in the library.
The study of the epos began with the discovery of a manuscript in the Dresden Library in 1815, written in the 15th century by the German Orientalist Heinrich Friedrich von Dietz. This manuscript contains an introduction and 12 sagas. The second copy of the epos is kept in Vatican. In this copy, published by the Italian scholar Ettore Rossi in 1952, the epos contains six sagas. More recently, other manuscripts of this epic have been found. The 1300th anniversary of the epos "Kitabi-Dada Gorgud" was officially celebrated in 1999.
Readers are presented with facsimiles of the Dresden and Vatican manuscripts in the two-volume encyclopedia "Kitabi-Dada Gorgud.".