For Generations learned by heart and copied by hand in the Volga region, Kyssa'i Yusuf (The Story of Joseph) is today the only surviving work by Kol Gali (1183-1236), widely considered the
founder of Bulgar-Tatar literature, here rendered in its entirety into English for the first time by Fred Beake and Ravil Bukharaev.
Supporting the translation are background essays on Volga-Bulgaria and the Kazan Tatars, Kol Gali and his Poem, Religion in the Joseph story and the significance of Kyssa'i Yusuf for the
Islamic world, as well as the approach taken in creating the English translation. In addition. Azat Minnekaev, one of Russia's leading contemporary artists, has produced over forty specially
commissioned illustrations to help bring the Joseph story to life.
The volume also contains a complete set of faesimiles of the early nineteenth-century manuscript of Kyssa'i Yusuf, which has been used for this translation, now in the safekeeping of
Tatarstan's National Library in Kazan.
