Abstract
This chapter delineates the library and intellectual world of a nineteenth-century scholar, Karimullah b. Lutfullah, through a study of the scribal practices evident in colophons and the corresponding contents of his manuscripts. His manuscripts have been included in the collection of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu manuscripts known as the “Delhi Collection”, which forms part of the British Library’s larger Asia and Africa collections. The Delhi Collection was long considered to be the remnants of the Mughal library consisting of roughly 1957 volumes of Arabic manuscripts, 1550 Persian, and 157 Urdu. This article will first identify Karimullah’s extant manuscripts through his scribal practices, such as identifying himself as the scribe or author in the colophon of the manuscript, to reconstruct his contribution to Islamic knowledge production in nineteenth-century Delhi before the 1857 rebellion. By using colophons in tandem with the content of the manuscripts, this scholar's biography, patronage connections, as well as intellectual motivations and trends that caused him to copy the texts will be studied. It will allow us to reconstruct his intellectual world, as a microcosm of the Islamic, intellectual interests and trends of the pre-1857 Muslim scholarly world of Delhi. Thereby, it is possible to also challenge and complicate the notion in previous scholarship that the Delhi Collection manuscripts consist in the contents of the Mughal royal library.
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Notes
- 1.
Alam and Subrahmanyam, 2004; Kinra, 2015.
- 2.
There is a rich body of scholarship on premodern royal and scholarly libraries of Islamicate knowledge, which permits a better understand of how a working scholar’s library may have functioned in Delhi: Kohlberg, 1992; Seyller, 1997; Hirschler, 2012; Hirschler, 2016; Gianni, 2016; Necipoğlu, Kafadar, and Fleischer, 2019.
- 3.
The works on pre-1857 Islamic knowledge and pedagogical practices in north India, which provided the background for this article, include: Robinson, 2001; Tareen, 2009; Haroon, 2011; Tareen, 2011; Tareen, 2012; Pernau, 2013; Ahmed, 2013b; Ahmed, 2016; Tareen, 2020a; Tareen, 2020b.
- 4.
Sanyal, 2005; Metcalf, 1982; Metcalf, 2009.
- 5.
Akkerman, 2019.
- 6.
Sims-Williams, 1982: 50.
- 7.
British Library, 2020.
- 8.
Sims-Williams, 1982: 50.
- 9.
Sims-Williams, 1982: 50.
- 10.
Haq and Quraishi, 1984.
- 11.
Haq and Quraishi, 1984: 5.
- 12.
Haq and Quraishi, 1984: 6.
- 13.
Losty, 1982.
- 14.
Seyller, 1997: 243. His source for the assertion that the Delhi Collection constitutes the “Mughal Imperial Library” is the 1982 reference cited here.
- 15.
Seyller, 1997: 316.
- 16.
British Library, London, Delhi Persian 1263, Sultan Walad, Ibtidāʾnāmah. This manuscript dates to the end of the thirteenth century CE, with an inscription in the hand of Dara Shukoh claiming that the manuscript is an autograph copy, and the seal of Dara Shukoh. Seyller, 1997: 316.
- 17.
British Library, London, Delhi Persian 438, Abdullah Marwarid, Inshāʾ. Abdullah Marwarid was a Timurid-era intellectual, and the manuscript dates to the fifteenth century, bearing an inscription associating the manuscript with Dara Shukoh.
- 18.
Seyller, 1997: 244.
- 19.
The material in this chapter was presented in the summer of 2018 at two conferences, first as a paper entitled, ‘Scribal Culture and Knowledge Production in the Delhi Collection Manuscripts’, at the IHR Workshop, London (July 2, 2018), organised by Christopher Bahl and Stefan Hanß, then as a paper entitled, ‘The Delhi Collection: Arabic Knowledge Production and Translation at the Mughal Court’, in the panel ‘Arabic in South Asia: A language in/of the Margins?’, organised by Christopher Bahl and Simon Leese at the ECSAS conference, Paris, France (July 24–27, 2018). I thank them for their invitation to participate and for the inspiration and impetus to carry out this research.
- 20.
The manuscripts in Arabic, Persian, and Urdu have been described to different levels of detail and in many respects are now considered to be different collections. Neither a printed catalogue nor on-line searchable records exist for the Arabic and Persian material, only handlists and unpublished notes that until recently were difficult to access. In 2015, my colleague, Daniel Lowe, Curator for Arabic collections, recorded the manuscripts, and scanned and placed online the unpublished notes on the collection. My sincere thanks go to him for sharing these materials with me. As for the Delhi Persian, in 2013, while working at the British Library as the Iran Heritage Foundation Curator for Persian Manuscripts, I received a grant from the Barakat Trust to have the 4000 pages of unpublished notes describing the collection digitized and placed on-line. This process, the contents of the notes, and how to access them are explained here: Sobers-Khan, 2014. My successor in the IHF curatorial position in 2014, Saqib Baburi, worked on this collection from 2014 to 2019 to create searchable catalogue records for the Persian collection on the UK’s union catalogue of Islamic manuscripts. I thank him for his conversations on this collection and for sharing his rich knowledge of this material.
- 21.
While undertaking research for this chapter, the opportunity did not exist to examine the Delhi Persian collection in detail for evidence of Karim Allah’s scribal or authorial traces, although such an endeavour would be necessary to get a full understanding of his scholarly activities.
- 22.
Al-Husayni, 1999: 1084; ‘Ali, 1914: 172.
- 23.
‘Ali, 1914: 172.
- 24.
Al-Husayni, 1999: 1084.
- 25.
Pernau, 2013: 48.
- 26.
Pernau, 2013: 183.
- 27.
Pernau, 2013: 185.
- 28.
Pernau, 2013: 278.
- 29.
Pernau, 2013: 251.
- 30.
Sobers-Khan, 2014. For the unpublished notes: British Library, London, India Office Records and Private Papers, Mss Eur E207, C. A. Storey, A. J. Arberry, and R. Levy, Notes Toward a Catalogue of Persian Manuscripts in the India Office Library; British Library, London, India Office Records and Private Papers, no allocated shelfmark, A. J. Arberry, and R. Levy, Notes Toward a Catalogue of Arabic Manuscripts in the India Office Library.
- 31.
Rao, 1915. Bilgrami’s catalogue of the Delhi MSS exists in unpublished form: S. A. Bilgrami, Catalogue of the Persian Delhi Manuscripts. A photocopy of a typescript belonging to the Royal Asiatic Society.
- 32.
For information about Blochman’s life, see: De Bruijn, 1990. Blochmann’s catalogues exist in unpublished form: British Library, London, IO Islamic 4601–4603, H. Blochmann, Hand-list of Persian manuscripts in the Delhi Collection, Calcutta, 1869; IO Islamic 4604–4606, H. Blochmann, Hand-list of Arabic manuscripts in the Delhi Collection, Calcutta, 1869. Blochmann first taught at the Calcutta Madrasah under principle W. Nassau Lees, and later became principle of the Calcutta Madrasah himself.
- 33.
British Library, London, Delhi Arabic 1040a: fol. 1–50, Ibn al-Hajib, al-Kāfiyyah fī Naḥw.
- 34.
Fleisch, 2012: 781; Brockelmann, 2017: II, 319–322.
- 35.
Rahman, 2001: 30.
- 36.
Rizvi, 2006: 60.
- 37.
Subtelny and Khalidov, 1995: 223; Brockelmann, 2017: II, 319.
- 38.
British Library, London, Delhi Arabic 1040b: fol. 51–80, Abu al-Fath Nasir ibn Abi al-Sayyid al-Mutarrizi, al-Miṣbāḥ.
- 39.
British Library, London, Delhi Arabic 1040c: fol. 81–96, Muhammad Karim Allah ibn Lutf Allah, al-Risālah al-Yūsufiyyah.
- 40.
Arberry et al. cite the Tadhkīrah-yi ʿUlamāʾ-yi Hind for this information.
- 41.
British Library, London, Delhi Arabic 1273a: fol. 1–34, al-Muʿallaqāt.
- 42.
British Library, London, Delhi Arabic 1273b: fol. 35–57, Shah Wali Allah, Qaṣāʾid and Ka’b ibn Zuhayr, Bānat Suʿād.
- 43.
Sells and Sells, 1990.
- 44.
British Library, London, Delhi Arabic 1310a: fol. 1–44, Al-Kisa’i, Qiṣaṣ al-Anbiyāʾ.
- 45.
British Library, London, IOR Mss Eur B186, Arthur John Arberry Papers.
- 46.
British Library, London, Delhi Arabic 1315, unidentified, History of Mahmud of Ghazna(?).
- 47.
British Library, London, Delhi Arabic 1344: fol. 1–33, unidentified, Ḥaqāʾiq al-daqāʾiq.
- 48.
British Library, London, Delhi Arabic 1344b: fol. 44–152, Muhibb al-Din Ahmad b. ‘Abd Allah al-Tabari al-Makki, Dhakhāʾir al-ʿuqba fī manāqib dhuya al-Qurbah.
- 49.
British Library, London, Delhi Arabic 1449, Ahmad Ali ibn Fath Allah al-Husayni al-Sandili, Sharḥ sullam al-ʿulūm (Commentary on the sullam al-ʿulūm of Muhibbullah al-Bihari).
- 50.
Ahmed, 2016: 488.
- 51.
Ahmed, 2016: 489.
- 52.
British Library, London, Delhi Arabic 1498a: fol. 1–41, Jalal al-Din al-Dawani, Sharḥ Tahdhīb al-manṭiq wa al-kalām (Copied by Karim Allah).
- 53.
British Library, London, Delhi Arabic 1498b: fol. 42–113, Muhammad Zahid b. Muhammad Aslam al Hasin al-Hawari, “Mir Zahid”, Ḥāshiyat Mīr Zahīd ʿalā Sharḥ al-Tahdhīb.
- 54.
It goes without explanation that this refers to lunar years rather than solar, which is why 9 years after 1806, if one assumes solar years (i.e., 1815) is slightly later than the manuscript attests (i.e., 1814).
- 55.
British Library, London, Delhi Arabic 1516d: fol. 40–65, unidentified, al-Qāsimiyyah fī Sharḥ al-Sharīfiyyah.
- 56.
El-Rouayheb, 2015: 80f.
- 57.
The Delhi Arabic collection is a rich site of scribal and intellectual activity around the commentarial tradition on logical treatises in South Asia; many other manuscripts in the collection complement Karim Allah’s intellectual activities. A small sampling includes copies of Khayrabadi’s Mirqāt al-Mīzān (British Library, London, Delhi Arabic 1529), and Tahtani’s al-Risālah fī taṣawwur wa al-taṣdīq, known as the Quṭubiyyah (Delhi Arabic 1595a).
- 58.
British Library, London, Delhi Arabic 1905, Ghiyath al-Din Jamshid b. Mas’ud b. Mahmud al-Mutabbib al-Kashi, Miftāḥ al-Ḥisāb.
- 59.
This includes: British Library, London, Delhi Arabic 1912a, a commentary on Shams al-Din al-Samarqandi’s compendium of Euclid, the Ashkāl al-taʾsīs; Delhi Arabic 1912b, al-Sharīfiyyah fī Qawāʾid al-Baḥth; Delhi Persian 1912c, Risālat Qafiyyah; Delhi Arabic 1939a, al-Sabʿa al-shidād; Delhi Arabic 1939b, Sharḥ al-Mulakhkhaṣ of Qadizadeh Rumi.
- 60.
Quraishi and Sims-Williams, 1978.
- 61.
See especially: Tareen, 2009; Tareen, 2011; Tareen, 2012.
- 62.
British Library, London, Delhi Persian 1151k: fol. 121–128, Muhammad Karim Allah, untitled treatise on the illumination of mosques; IO Islamic 4308b*: fol. 132–145, Muhammad Karim Allah, ʿIṣbāt al-Sitta fī Dafʿ Ahl al-Bidaʿ.
- 63.
British Library, London, Delhi Persian 195c, fol. 35–50, Muhammad Karim Allah, Hidāyat al-Ẓallīn fī Dafʿ Inkār al-Munkirīn; Delhi Arabic 319a: fol. 1–22, Muhammad Karim Allah, untitled treatise about the Prophet and miracles surrounding his birth.
- 64.
British Library, London, IO Islamic 4279i, unidentified, Radd-i Vahhabiyya.
- 65.
British Library, London, Delhi Urdu 21: fol. 110–115, Muhammad Karim Allah, untitled reply to a Wahhabi fatwa.
- 66.
British Library, London, Delhi Urdu 21: fol. 1–91, 116, Muhammad Karim Allah, Ḥifẓ al-imān min Yad al-Shayṭān.
- 67.
British Library, London, Delhi Urdu 21: fol. 97–108, Muhammad Karim Allah, Risālah-yi Ḥālat-i Aṣl-i ʿashiyyah.
- 68.
British Library, London, Delhi Persian 208i, Muhammad Karim Allah, Dār Javāz-i Shʿir Khwānī dar Khuṭbah.
- 69.
British Library, London, Delhi Persian 1151c: fol. 29–43, Ma’bud Shah, Ramz Al-ʿAshiqīn.
- 70.
Quraishi and Sims-Williams, 1978: 34.
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Sobers-Khan, N. (2022). Muslim Scribal Culture in India Around 1800: Towards a Disentangling of the Mughal Library and the Delhi Collection. In: Bahl, C.D., Hanß, S. (eds) Scribal Practice and the Global Cultures of Colophons, 1400–1800. New Transculturalisms, 1400–1800. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90154-7_9
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