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[TRANSCAUCASIAN SEMINARY] Dva protokola zasedaniy Komissii po ustanovleniyu pis'mennogo shrifta v Zakavkazskoy uchitel'skoy seminarii [i.e. Two minutes of the meetings of the Commitee for the establishment of the written font in the Transcaucasian Teachers' Seminary]

Item #2208

Tiflis, 1899. 28 pp., 3 lithographic plates. 22,5x15 cm.

Original printed wrapper. Very good condition. Spine is slightly restored.

First and only edition.

An interesting document from the history of the development of Russian written (or cursive) fonts – the fonts, that by the end of XIXth century was used as the main one in schools and in correspondence, but unlike printed fonts was less standardized.

For creating the guidelines to the pupils, a special committee was formed in Transcaucasian Teachers’ Seminary – the only one of this type of schools in the South Caucasus at the time. Altogether in the Russian Empire at the time around 60 seminaries like these were active – they were all responsible for preparing young teachers for other schools.
We could not find the examples of similar meetings that took place in other seminaries at the time, but it is safe to assume, that the initiative to call for this meeting was regional, and was dictated by the fact that for a lot of the future teachers at Transcaucasian Teachers’ Seminary Russian was not the first language.
As a result, this protocol was printed, that included the guidelines for improving one’s handwriting, as well as the standardized version of the written fonts that was used in the Seminary. The students had to take exams at the end of 1st year and 3rd years, using these guidelines. One of the interesting outcomes of the work of the commission was the advice to write both capital and lowercase letters similarly, which went against the tradition at the time, as well as now. It was done to simplify the process of memorizing the outlines of the letters, and follow the principle of ‘natural economy of the written fonts’, as the committee stated.

Transcaucasian Teachers’ Seminary was a major center for training teachers for the peoples of the South Caucasus. A 4-year specialized school in the Russian Empire in Gori (Georgia), which operated from 1876 to 1917 and trained primary school teachers. On the initiative of Mirza Fatali Akhundov and Mufti Gaibzade, an Azerbaijani branch was opened in 1879, joining the Russian, Georgian and Armenian branches – for the first time in South Caucasus.
The history of the creation of the first fundamental Azerbaijani textbook "Veten Dili" ("Native Word") is directly connected with the Transcaucasian Teachers' Seminary. The first part for first-grade students was compiled by A. Chernyaevsky in 1881, and the second part for second- and third-grade students was compiled and published by A. Chernyaevsky and Safarali bey Velibekov in 1888. In the seminary, where democratically and progressively minded teachers taught, students from all over the Caucasus studied European languages, geography, arithmetic and other subjects.

Not in the Worldcat.

Price: $950.00