About 31,000 Armenian manuscripts are preserved in state, church, and private collections in the Republic of Armenia and various countries around the world. However, some manuscripts remain uncatalogued or unknown, including those preserved in Baku.
During the period from the 1940s to the 1970s, several Armenian scholars conducted research on Armenian manuscripts housed in collections in Baku, the capital of the Azerbaijan SSR. In the late 1940s, Vazgen Hakobyan studied manuscripts held at the Central City Library, named after Lenin, and the Nizami State Museum of History. Later, Levon Khachikyan examined Armenian manuscripts in the Republican Manuscript Depository of the Academy of Sciences of the Azerbaijan SSR and the Central City Library named after V.I. Lenin. His research resulted in a handwritten catalogue of these manuscripts, which is now preserved in an archival collection bearing his name at the Matenadaran.
The findings of these scholars are supplemented by manuscript microfilms kept at Matenadaran and the Korneli Kekelidze Georgian National Centre of Manuscripts, as well as archival materials and scholarly records. These sources and related literature collectively document twelve Armenian manuscripts, two Georgian manuscripts, and a silver plaque from another Armenian manuscript that was previously housed in the capital of the Azerbaijan SSR. The colophon data on these manuscripts, their provenances, and their movements — considering the formation of manuscript collections in Azerbaijan — provide a more comprehensive understanding of their trajectory.