The Institute of Manuscripts of the Azerbaijan Academy of Sciences is a center for collecting, systematizing, storing and publishing medieval manuscripts. It currently includes about 40,000 documents including more than 11 000 manuscripts, in languages that include Azeri and Ottoman Turkish, Persian and Arabic. Among the carefully preserved books on natural sciences there are numerous sources on medicine and pharmacy in Oriental languages. The oldest of them dates back to the 9th century, the latest to the 20th.