Inskrypcje na tatarskim cmentarzu w Osmołowie

Osmołowo (Bel. Asmolava) is a village located near the town of Kletsk (Pol.=Bel. Kleck) in the eastern territory of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (today south-west Belarus). Since the middle of the 16th century it had been the centre of the Tatar settlement in the Kletsk Duchy which was the property of the Radziwiłł noble family. The only Tatar cemetery that has been preserved in Osmołowo until today had been founded at the beginning of the 19th century. The oldest grave with an inscription dates back to 1805. We have discovered 27 inscriptions from the 1st half of the 19th century The epigraphical tradition in Osmołowo at that time represented similar trends as in other cemeteries of the Polish-Lithuanian Tatar gentry. The inscriptions had been composed of Arabic or Turkish confessional formulas (mainly shahada) and of the information about the deceased (name, date of death, military ranks, family affiliation) in Polish, written in Latin and/or Arabic script. In the next decades of the 19th century, the inscriptions developed in the same way as in other cemeteries of the small-town communities of the Tatars during this period which meant that the Arabic script was used both for the confessional section and informative section (in Polish or Belorussian), and introduction of more varied Arabic or Turkich eschatological formulas as ayat 3:182, and Turkish invocations Allāh raḥmet eylesin (Tur. “Let the God have mercy”), ey ğennet müyesser eyle (Tur. “O, paradise, be accessible”) which eventually transformed into Allāh raḥmet eyle ğennet firdeuse (Tur.-Per. “O, God, have mercy, heaven, paradise”).