This page is intended to list and describe the various manuscript sources which contain text in Chorasmian in the Arabic or Arabo-Chorasmian script, with links to digital images where possible. Rough chronological order based on text composition date, rather than manuscript date.

There are five major Arabic texts, some manuscripts of which have Chorasmian glosses, quotations, or marginalia. These are the following (note that in the manuscripts list, only those mss. which actually have Chorasmian words and phrases are listed):

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§1 الاثار الباقية عن القرون الخالية “Remaining Traces of Past Eras” (better known as the Chronology) by Abū Rayḥān Muḥammad al-Bīrūnī (d. 1048)

Written in 1010 CE, the Chronology is a description and compendium of calendrical systems and related lore known to al-Bīrūnī, including materials both ancient and contemporary to him. Its information on Chorasmian—including the Chorasmian names of months and planets, for example—is particularly valuable, as al-Bīrūnī was personally familiar with Chorasmian language and customs. It also includes information, transmitted in Arabic, on the history of Chorasmia and its language and institutions.

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§2 مقدمة الادب “The Introduction to Style” (known as the Muqaddima) by Abū al-Qāsim Maḥmūd b. ‘Umar al-Zamakhshari (d. 1144)

Al-Zamakhshari was a native of Chorasmia (his laqab indicating his origin in the town of Zamakhshar, south of the city of Gurganj aka al-Jurjāniyya). By far the greater part of the Chorasmian vocabu­lary preserved for posterity is to be found in the form of interlinear glosses throughout a single manuscript of his celebrated Arabic dictionary, the Muqaddimat al-Adab. Many manuscripts of this text bear multilingual glosses, most often in Persian, but also in Chorasmian Turkic (early Chagatai), Mongolian, and of course Chorasmian itself.

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§3 يتيمة الدهر في فتاوى اهل العصر “The Unicum of the Age concerning the Fatwas of the Contemporaries” (known as the Yatīma) by Muhammad ‘Alā’ al-Dīn al-Tarjumānī al-Makkī al-Khuwārizmī (d. 645/1257)

A collection of transcripts and summaries of legal cases compiled by the above-mentioned al-Khuwārizmī, of the city of al-Jurjāniyya. The author and his father are among the most famous Khwarezmian fuqahā’ (see Brockelmann's GAL I 381 for more). Togan (1927) found 8 mss. of the Yatīma in Istanbul with Chorasmian sentences and gives what amounts to a critical edition of the relevant parts. MacKenzie (1996) re-edited the known examples and showed that more than half are repeated in the later compilation Qunyat al-Munya (see below).

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§4 قُنية المُنية لتتميم الغُنية “The Acquisition of the Desired object for the Completion of the Sufficiency” (known as the Qunya) by Najm al-dīn al-Zāhidī al-Ġazmīnī (d. 658/1260)

The Qunya, a quite famous and frequently copied text, is essentially a compilation of Islamic legal cases. It is actually a résumé of an older work, entitled Munyat al-Fuqahā’ by the scholar Fakhr al-Dīn Badī‘ b. Abī Manṣūr al-‘Arabī al-Qubaznī, a teacher of al-Ġazmīnī; the Munya is not extant, and itself probably was a compilation of cases based on the above-mentioned Yatīma.

A number of copies of the Qunya contain quotations in Chorasmian, often including their Arabic translation in the same sentence. These manuscripts are the best sources of Chorasmian data, since the Arabic script is frequently fully pointed, there are full and even long sentences, and the context in which a phrase is supposed to have been uttered is clear.

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§5 رسالة “Treatise” (known as the Risāla) by Jamāl al-dīn al-‘Imādī al-Jurjānī (d. ~750/1354)

The Risāla is the name for an untitled text composed by the Khwarizmian jurist Jamāl al-dīn al-‘Imādī al-Jurjānī (d. ~750/1354), in which he gathers the Chorasmian terms occuring in the Munyat al-fuqahā’ and the Qunya, while including some phrases not attested in known mss. of the Qunya. He indicates the book's purpose only with the statementترجمة الالفاظ التي وردت بالخوارزمية في اثناء الكتاب الموسوم بقنية المنية فإنه مختص مبسوط محيط مضبوط “translation of the words which occur in Chorasmian in the course of the book entitled Qunyat al-Munya and it is a complete, comprehensive, precise compendium”. The text suggests not only that the Qunya remained popular in Khwarizm, but also that the Chorasmian language, though still understood, at times needed explanation and clarification.

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