Editions of the Work “Oku Kuraly” by Akhmet Baitursynuly: Bibliographic and Typographical Features

Abstract

The article analyzes the bibliography and typographic features of Akhmet Baitursynula's textbooks “Oku Kuraly”, published in the period from 1912 to 1928. The original editions of books called “Oku Kuraly” are compared in full, the order and number of their editions, the types of textbooks and their differences, the terminological meaning of the name “Oku Kuraly”, as well as Cyrillic editions released to date are investigated. A systematic comparison is carried out, the number of times the textbook has been published and the reasons for these publications are studied. The analysis is divided into three stages: at the first stage, the terminological meaning (definition) of the name “Oku Kuraly” is analyzed, its connection with the term “alfba” (alphabet) is considered and their differences are emphasized. At the second stage, the types of textbooks that were designated as “Oku Kuraly” are considered. As a result, the publications “Oku Kuraly” are divided into three groups: “alphabetical books”, “explanatory books” and “anthologies”, with a list of publications for each group in the table and an explanation of their system. At the third stage, in order to compile a complete bibliographic index of “Oku Kuraly” publications, information from various scientific and journalistic sources is compared with original works, errors in previous bibliographic data are identified, links to missing publications are provided, and a list of 23 Oku Kuraly publications issued between 1912 and 1928 is compiled, with complete metadata.

Keywords: Akhmet Baitursynuly, “Oku Kuraly”, “The ABC”, bibliography, printing house.