Unique Baku museum displays mini books

BAKU - Anatolia News Agency

The Miniature Books Museum, which exhibits 6,500 miniature books published in differet parts of the world, are open to visitors for free in Azerbaijani capital Baku.

One of the world’s first and only mini-book museums in the Azerbaijani capital, Baku, is celebrating its 10th year, having welcomed more than 144,000 people in its decade of existence.

The museum is home to over 6,500 books published in 71 countries. Among the books are a 2x2-millimeter “Flower Alphabet,” which was published in Tokyo; “Pictures of English History,” which was published in 1815 in London; Pushkin’s “Yevgeni Onegin,” which was published in Saint Petersburg in 1837; “La Fontaine Fables,” which was published in 1850 in Paris and the 24-volume “One Thousand and One Nights,” a seminal work in Arabic literature.

Mustafa Kemal Atatürk’s three-volume mini “Nutuk” (a famous speech by the Turkish leader in 1927) that was published in Azerbaijan in 2008 is also kept in the museum.

The books in the 147-square-meter museum are categorized under titles including Azerbaijan, rare books, religious books, Russian history, Russian classics, Western classics, cinema, Central Asia, America, Europe and China, and displayed in 37 shop windows.

The director of the museum and owner of the collection, Zerife Salahova, said she had been collecting mini-books for 30 years and that the museum was open to visitors for free.