Wandering through the old town of Baku, along a tiny little street I stumbled across this tiny little museum holding tiny little books, and, as it was free to enter..Fuck it let's have a mooch. Glad I did!
The collection is a private one the owner Zarifa Salahova has been collecting them for some 30 years or so. She decided to share her collection with the wider world and opened this "museum" in 2002.
Quaintly called "fairy books" there are on display just under 3,000, (though her entire collection is nearer 7,000) they include works by the classical writers, Pushkin, Shakespeare, and Dostoyevsky.
As they have been sourced from around the world they are written in many languages, including Azeri, English, German and russian.
In 2014, Salahova was awarded a certificate by "The Guiness Book of World Records" for her possession of the largest collection of miniature books in the world.
The smallest book in the collection is just 5/64" x 5/64", a pretty strong magnifying glass is required and the oldest is a 17th C copy of the Koran, which is 15/64"x 23/64"
Here are just a few of them, sadly unable to pick them up, hold them read them as they are all contained in locked glass display cabinets.
Copies of the Koran with prayer beads
Hansel and Gretel and The Wolf and the Seven Kids, both classic Grimm's fairy tales
More classic children's books, Beatrix Potter
Soviet
The full sized edition has been around since the late 1950's and can in one form or another be purchased today
Classics translated into Russian, to the l3eft a tome by Shakespeare , two of his tragedies though unnamed, and a book of translated English poetry
.............has left the building
A series of children's books from the Soviet era
Someone has had a hard day at work
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