The Abu Raihan Biruni Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Science of the Republic of Uzbekistan was established in 1943 on the foundations of the Oriental Department of the Alishir Navai'i State Public Library. Until 1950 it was called the Institute for the Study of Oriental Manuscripts, and after 1950, considering the range of its scholarly directions, it was renamed the Oriental Studies Institute.

At the beginning of its establishment, the Institute was only a department for the study of oriental manuscripts. To expand the activities of the Institute, it was necessary to establish additional departments, such as the initial processing and systematization, scholarly descriptions and cataloguing, research and publication of the manuscripts and historical documents. However, it was decided to also include the study of the political, economic and cultural situation of the foreign countries of the Middle and Near East and their links to Central Asia under the same heading.

The scholarly activities of the Institute are linked predominantly to its manuscript collection. The collection of the oriental manuscripts of the Institute is well known in the world as a depository of oriental manuscripts and is considered one of the richest in scientific value. The most ancient works, which contains more than a thousand years of history, are protected in the collection. The most recent works date from the beginning of the twentieth century.

Materials in the collection include works written in Uzbek, Arabic, Persian, Tajik, Urdu, Pasto, Azeri, Ottoman Turkish, Tatar, Turkmen, Uighur and other languages. These materials encompass the fields of history, literature, philosophy, law, astronomy, physics, chemistry, medicine, pharmacology, language, geography, music, mathematics, mineralogy, agriculture, the figurative arts, and so on.

At the present time the manuscript collection contains 25,261 volumes. Many of them are miscellanies, where one codex contains diverse treatises. Thus there are far more treatises included in the collection than represented by the number of volumes alone. The Institute's collection of lithographed and printed books amounts to about 39,300 volumes. They have important historical meaning for the study of history in Central Asia, its neighboring states – Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India, China and Arab countries – and also for the study of the political, economic, diplomatic and cultural links among them.

The collection has many manuscripts about the history of Islam, the Islamic sciences, and Sufism, written in Arabic, Persian, and old Uzbek and dating from the ninth to the nineteenth centuries. Among the manuscripts are early examples of the Qur'an, which date from the ninth century and employ the Kufic script. In addition, the collection holds rare copies of the Qur'an written at various times employing the Naskh script in artistic ways.

The Institute has a distinctive collection of archival documents that chronologically encompass a thousand-year period. The oldest document is from the tenth century, and the most recent is from the twentieth century. In particularly large quantity are documents compiled in the Bukharan, Khivan and Qoqand khanates. At the present time the Institute studies and publishes these documents.

Starting in 1952, effort was applied to the publication of catalogues of the Institute's manuscripts. Up to the present, eleven volumes of the catalogue, The Collection of Oriental Manuscripts of the Academy of Sciences of the Republic of Uzbekistan have been published; thematically arranged catalogues on History, the Natural Sciences, Medicine, and Sufism, as well as a two-volume catalogue, Oriental Miniatures, have also been produced more recently. Work on completing the catalogue continues. In addition, researchers of the Institute have prepared and published catalogues that describe the works of outstanding scholars of science and culture – Abu Nasr al-Farabi, Abu ‘Ali ibn Sina, Amir Hosraw Dehlawi, ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami and Alishir Navai'i.

The Institute's continuing research efforts include work in the spheres of the history of science and culture and the study of the scientific and spiritual heritage of such renowned thinkers as al-Khwarezmi, al-Ferghani, al-Beruni, Ibn Sina, al-Farabi, Ulughbeg, Imam al-Bukhari, al-Marginani, al-Maturidi and others.

On par with this research, serious attention has been devoted to the study of contemporary questions concerning neighboring states and their various relationships with the Republic of Uzbekistan.