By the decision of the Scientific Council of the Institute of Folklore of ANAS, the scientific book named “Seraya Shapshal and Southern Azerbaijan Folklore” by Doctor of Philosophy in Philology, Associate Professor Afag Khurramgizi has been published. The book is attracted as an important study that investigats the history of the presentation of South Azerbaijani folklore in the European scientific environment.

The book is dedicated to the work of the Karaite Turk, a well-known Turkologist, orientalist and public and political figure Seraya Shapshal, entitled “Examples of the folk literature of the Turks of Iranian Azerbaijan”, published in Krakow in 1935. That book is considered one of the first systematic folklore anthologies on South Azerbaijani folk literature and holds a special place among the rare sources on Azerbaijani folklore in European Turkology.

The materials collected and published by Seraya Shapshal include quatrains, proverbs, fairy tales, lyrical examples and other folklore genres. The research carried out by PhD, associate professor Afag Khurramgizi extensively analyzes the scientific value of this source, its collection principles, language and stylistic features, as well as its role in the context of the study of South Azerbaijani folklore in Europe. The re-introduction of the book into scientific circulation is of great importance for modern folklore studies and linguistics, especially dialectology.

The first part of the book begins with an Introduction written by the author in Polish. Then, Shapshal divides the work into two main parts: “Epic” and “Lyrical Texts”. This division reflects the systematic presentation of various genres of South Azerbaijani folklore. This is followed by “Translations”, “Dictionary”, “Additions to the Dictionary” and “Writing Samples”.

The author then mentions the importance of the book, noting that the work is valuable in several important aspects. The first is that the book is the result of field research. In other words, Seraya Shapshal prepared this work by collecting various examples of South Azerbaijani folklore. Secondly, these folklore examples were translated into Polish at a high level and adapted to that language. The quality of the translation and its consistency with the original text are the main factors that increase the scientific value of the book. Another important aspect is the preservation of the dialect characteristics of the texts in the book.

The book “Seraya Shapshal and the Folklore of Southern Azerbaijan” is intended for folklorists, dialectologists, philologists and specialists in general who study the history of Azerbaijani folk culture from a scientific perspective and is an important contribution to the evaluation of the folklore heritage of Southern Azerbaijan in an international scientific context.

It should be noted that the scientific editor of the book is Doctor of Sciences in Philology, Professor Guler Abdullabeyova and the reviewers are PhD in Philology, Associate Professor Rza Khalilov and Doctor of Sciences in Philology, Associate Professor Shakir Albaliyev.