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The ancient cultures of the Silk Road, to which numerous peoples and religious communities contributed, can be seen most clearly in the texts and images that they themselves left behind. The most complex and richest collection of these documents comes from the oasis of Turfan. It includes Buddhist, Manichaean and Christian texts as well as documents from everyday monastic and commercial life, letters and other texts, in over 20 languages and scripts. The main task of this long-term Academy Project is the edition of the Turkish and Iranian part of the Berlin Turfan collection (manuscripts from the Antiquity and the Middle Ages found in the Turfan oasis).

The Turfan studies research group takes part in the programme "Languages and Cultures of the Silk Road" of the  Berliner Antike Kolleg. 

The academy project "Turfan Studies" is part of the federal and state funded Academies' programme which serves to discover, to contextualise and to preserve our cultural heritage. The programme is coordinated by the Union of the German Academies of Sciences and Humanities.

brochure "Turfan Studies"