Uzbekistan in UNESCO's Memory of the World Register
Ten Uzbek entries sit on UNESCO's Memory of the World registers. What each one physically is, who holds it, and which ones a visitor can actually see.
On 23 April 2026, UNESCO's Executive Board unanimously backed a proposal from Uzbekistan to make 19 November the International Day of Documentary Heritage. Sixty-five countries co-sponsored it, and the formal proclamation is scheduled for the 44th General Conference in November 2027. It shows how seriously Tashkent takes a UNESCO list few travellers know: Memory of the World, the register for manuscripts, archives and photographs rather than buildings.
Uzbekistan's name is on ten entries across two of those registers: seven on the International Register (three of them shared with other countries) and three on the Asia-Pacific register. Only one is on permanent public display that we could confirm. This guide covers what each one is, who holds it, and whether a visitor can realistically see it. Everything here is as of October 2026.
Memory of the World is not World Heritage
The two programmes are easy to confuse. World Heritage lists places: old towns, monuments, landscapes. Uzbekistan's newest is the Tashkent modernism listing of July 2026, ten 20th-century buildings that include the circus and Chorsu Market (several of them turn up in our walk through Soviet-era Tashkent). Memory of the World, which UNESCO founded in 1992, covers documentary heritage instead: archival and library collections, manuscripts, photographs, film. Monuments are also protected at home through a separate system, explained in our guide to the national heritage list.
The International Register is decided centrally by UNESCO; regional committees keep their own registers, and countries can keep national ones. For a traveller the difference matters: most World Heritage sites can be walked up to. A Memory of the World entry is usually a box in a climate-controlled store room, and seeing it means a reading room, an exhibition or a facsimile.
The ten entries at a glance
| Entry | Register and year | Held by | Can you see it? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Holy Koran Mushaf of Othman | International, 1997 | Muslim Board of Uzbekistan; shown at the Center of Islamic Civilization, Tashkent | Yes, on permanent display |
| Collection of the Al-Biruni Institute of Oriental Studies | International, 1997 | Al-Biruni Institute, Tashkent | Research access; occasional exhibitions |
| Archives of the Chancellery of Khiva Khans | International, 2017 | Central State Archive | Research access only |
| The Qushbegi Chancellery of the Bukhara Emirate | International, 2023 | Central State Archive | Research access only |
| Mawlana's Kulliyat (complete works of Rumi), six countries | International, 2023 | Uzbek part: Al-Biruni Institute | Research access only |
| Jami al-Tawarikh, with Türkiye | International, 2025 | Uzbek copy: Al-Biruni Institute | Research access only |
| Collection of documents from Mount Mugh, with Korea | International, 2025 | Not named in the UNESCO entry | No display found |
| Turkestan Collection | Asia-Pacific, 2016 | National Library of Uzbekistan | No display found |
| Turkestan Album (1871–1872) | Asia-Pacific, 2024 | National Library of Uzbekistan | No regular display found |
| Images of Khorazm Oasis by Khudoybergan Devonov | Asia-Pacific, 2024 | Ichan-Kala Museum Reserve, Khiva, and Abdulla Yusupov | Possibly, in Khiva (see below) |
The International Register: seven entries
The Uthman Qur'an (1997)
This is the one everyone means. It's an early Kufic manuscript, roughly 338 folios, about a third of the original, written without vowel marks. Tradition attributes it to the caliph Uthman; treat that as tradition rather than settled scholarship. UNESCO's register entry names the Muslim Board of Uzbekistan as its holder. In November 2025 it moved from the Muyi Muborak madrasah at the Khast Imam complex into the Qur'an Hall of the new Center of Islamic Civilization, where it sits on a central pedestal behind armoured glass with temperature and humidity controls.
You can see it every day. The centre opened to the public on 17 March 2026, runs 09:00 to 22:00 with no closing day, and charges foreign adults about 425,000 soum including an audio guide (last checked: October 2026). Most visits are guided group tours of around two hours. Our guide to the Center of Islamic Civilization covers the visit, and the old setting that older guides still describe is in our Khast Imam complex piece.
The Al-Biruni Institute manuscripts (1997)
UNESCO's register gives 1997 as the registration year. The institute's own history page and the World Society for the Study, Preservation and Popularization of the Cultural Heritage of Uzbekistan both say 2000, so you'll see that date locally too.
The institute was founded in 1943 under the Academy of Sciences, on the base of the Oriental Department of the public library in Tashkent. It holds about 26,000 manuscript volumes, about 40,000 lithographed and printed books, and historical documents that the institute puts at about 10,000 (the World Society's Cultural Legacy project says more than 5,000). The oldest item it names is a 9th-century Kufic Qur'an. Languages run from Uzbek, Arabic and Persian to Urdu, Pashto and Uighur, and subjects from law and literature to astronomy and mineralogy. Catalogue publication began in 1952 and runs to eleven general volumes plus subject catalogues.
Can you see it? Not casually. The institute is a research body, not a museum. It publishes a procedure for requesting electronic copies: an official letter from your institution to the director, the inventory number, author and title of the item, and a copy of your passport and CV, with an expert commission deciding each request. Everyone else has to wait for one of the institute's occasional exhibitions, which have no fixed schedule that we found.
The Khiva khans' chancellery archive (2017)
Khiva's chancellery archive reached the register six years before Bukhara's. The fund, kept at the Central State Archive, covers more than 200 years of events in what is now Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, in Arabic, Persian, Chagatai and Turkic. UNESCO's entry highlights more than 20,000 documents in Arabic script from the 18th to the early 20th century on how the khanate was actually run, plus its dealings with Russia, Britain, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Bukhara and Kokand. Sample images include an 1858 khan's decree and an 1864 foreign passport. Pair it with our Khiva khanate history.
The qushbegi's chancellery, Bukhara Emirate (2023)
Bukhara's counterpart followed in 2023. UNESCO ranks it among the biggest bodies of rulers' papers in Central Asia: nearly 9,500 folders holding about 200,000 documents, covering more than two centuries across today's Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan and parts of Afghanistan, in Arabic, Persian, Uzbek, Chagatai, Russian and other languages. Its diplomatic papers reach as far as Japan and the United States. It sits in the Central State Archive (fund I-126), which makes it research material, not an exhibit. Our history of the Bukhara Emirate gives the political frame.
The complete works of Rumi (2023)
Inscribed in the same May 2023 cycle, at the Executive Board's 216th session, "Mawlana's Kulliyat" was submitted jointly by Bulgaria, Germany, Iran, Tajikistan, Türkiye and Uzbekistan. It covers the 13th-century poet's complete works, from the Masnavi to his letters, in manuscripts spread across those countries. UzDaily's report on the 2023 additions names the Al-Biruni Institute as the Uzbek holder, so the same access rules apply.
Two shared entries in 2025
UNESCO's 2025 list of 74 new items includes two with Uzbekistan as a submitter. The first is Rashid al-Din's Jami al-Tawarikh, a history of the tribes and nations of Asia and Europe, nominated with Türkiye. The two oldest copies are in Istanbul's Topkapi Palace Library; the Uzbek one is inventory No 1620, which the World Society's catalogue identifies as the Al-Biruni Institute's earliest illustrated manuscript, with ceremonial portraits of the Genghisid khans Ogedei and Hulagu and their wives.
The second is the collection of Sogdian documents from Mount Mugh, prepared by the International Institute for Central Asian Studies and the International Center for Documentary Heritage; UNESCO lists Uzbekistan and the Republic of Korea as submitters. The documents follow Dewashtich, ruler of the Penjikent principality, up to his defeat by Arab forces in 722: business records, letters, contracts, diplomatic exchanges, spy reports and a marriage contract. The entry doesn't say where they're kept.
The Asia-Pacific Register: three entries
Turkestan Collection (2016)
The National Library's Turkestan Collection runs to 594 volumes of printed material on the history, ethnography, economy and geography of Turkestan from 1867 to 1939, including topographic surveys, expedition reports and accounts of railway building and Russian military campaigns. The register entry says some titles survive only here.
Turkestan Album (2024)
Both 2024 entries were added at the regional committee's 10th meeting, in Ulaanbaatar in May 2024, as Gazeta.uz reported. The album was compiled in 1871 and 1872 in ten volumes and four parts: archaeology, ethnography, crafts and history. The orientalist A. L. Kuhn led the work, the photographs are by N. N. Nekhoroshev, and V. P. Ivanov and M. A. Rotmeister prepared the painting and military material. The register entry says the historical part was meant to portray the places of Russian military operations and the people who "paved the way" into Central Asia, so read the captions with that purpose in mind. A complete set is kept in the National Library's rare book fund; we found no regular display.
Khudoybergan Devonov's Khorezm photographs (2024)
Devonov (1879–1937) was a Khiva photographer, cinematographer and director. His glass negatives and prints follow Khorezm through several regimes: Muhammad Rahim Khan II, Asfandiyar Khan (1910 to 1918), the Khorezm People's Soviet Republic (1920 to 1924) and Soviet Uzbekistan to 1937. The regional register entry calls them the only visual evidence of some of those turning points, and lists two holders: the Ichan-Kala Museum Reserve in Khiva and Abdulla Yusupov.
That makes this the second entry with a realistic chance of being seen. Our Islam Khoja guide notes a Devonov display in the old Russian-method school in front of the complex, but the museum's own page about it has gone offline, so ask at the Itchan Kala ticket office before counting on it.
The national register as a pipeline
Uzbekistan also keeps a national Memory of the World register. A report filed with the Asia-Pacific committee in 2016 listed sixteen items, and three have since moved up: the Khiva Khanate and Bukhara qushbegi archives became international entries in 2017 and 2023, and the Turkestan Collection went onto the regional register in 2016. Others on that list include Komil Devoniy's Khorezm tanbur notation (State Conservatory), Kokand-paper manuscripts (Kokand Literature Museum), a Sogdian script collection (Samarkand State Reserve-Museum) and Max Penson's photographs (Central State Archive). That list dates from 2015 and is the latest we could open.
What to watch next
The same report records al-Mawardi's "Al-Ahkam al-Sultaniyya" sent to UNESCO for the International Register in March 2015; it isn't on the register today. We found no public list of current Uzbek nominations, so check UNESCO's register before quoting a total.
Our take: the Qur'an Hall is the one place where Memory of the World status becomes something you can stand in front of, and it's worth the ticket. Khiva may give you Devonov. The rest are for researchers, or for whoever is in Tashkent when an exhibition goes up, perhaps around the new 19 November documentary heritage day once it is proclaimed.