Symposium
The Libraries and Archival Practices in the Early Modern Eastern Islamic World
The Japan Office of the Association for the Study of Persianate Societies welcomes members of the ASPS community and beyond to attend the symposium it is helping to organize. Pre-registration is required for both on-site and online participation.
Symposium Title: “The Libraries and Archival Practices in the Early Modern Eastern Islamic World”
Libraries and archival practices played a pivotal role in shaping the intellectual, cultural, and religious landscapes of the pre-modern Islamic world. Since the early 21st century, substantial research on libraries and book culture, based on manuscripts and documentary sources, have emerged, particularly within the fields of Arabic and Turkish historical studies. However, comparable scholarship focusing on other regions of the Islamic world, notably Iran and India, remains relatively underexplored. This symposium aims to address this gap by bringing together scholars from the UK, Iran, Germany, and Japan to examine the complex histories of manuscript provenance, endowments, library cataloguing, and preservation in early modern Iran and India. Through these investigations, the symposium seeks to deepen our understanding of the cultural, intellectual, and religious dynamics of book culture in these regions and its broader significance within the Islamic world.
Venue: Large Conference Room (303), Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA), Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (3-11-1 Asahi-cho, Fuchu-shi, Tokyo 183-8534, JAPAN) and online
Date and Time: Thursday, 20 March 2025, 13:00–18:30 JST (in-person and online)
Program:
13:00–13:10 Introduction: Yui Kanda (ILCAA, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies)
Chair: Kazuo Morimoto (Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia/Asian Research Library, The University of Tokyo)
13:10–14:10 Philip Bockholt (University of Münster): Four Centuries Later: Tracing Shah ʿAbbās’s Book Endowments to Ardabil in Istanbul
14:10–14:20 Break
14:20–15:20 Yui Kanda: Shāh ʿAbbās I’s Manuscript Endowments and Shrine Practices: Early Kufic Qurʾāns Endowed to Mashhad and Ardabil
15:20–15:30 Break
15:30–16:30 Elahe Mahbub (Organization of Libraries, Museums and Document Center, Astan Quds Razavi) and Behzad Nemati (The Islamic Research Foundation, Astan Quds Razavi): Barrasī-ye kohan-tarīn fehrest-hā-ye bejāmande az Kitābkhāne-ye Astān-e Qods-e Rażavī (in Persian)
16:30–16:40 Break
16:40–17:40 Andrew Peacock (University of St Andrews): The Library of the Eighteenth Century Mughal Prince Acchai Sahib
17:40–17:45 Break
17:45–18:30
General Discussion
Discussant: Christoph U. Werner (University of Bamberg)
Co-organised by:
Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia and Africa (ILCAA), Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (Joint Research Project “Adaptation and Reorientation of Texts and its Actors in the Medieval and Early Modern Middle East” [Yui Kanda, Philip Bockholt, Kazuo Morimoto]; Core Research Project “Field Archiving of Memory: Dynamics of Cooperation within the Islamic Society”) and the Asian Research Library, The University of Tokyo
Supported by:
Japan Office, Association for the Study of Persianate Societies; Institute for Advanced Studies on Asia, The University of Tokyo (Regular Research Project “Approaches to the ‘Persianate World’”)
Registration:
Pre-registration is required by 22:00 JST on March 18, 2025, through the link below. Online participants will receive the event link via email.
https://forms.gle/CoYMxzGkZ3deUdt28
Abstracts:
Philip Bockholt (University of Münster): Four Centuries Later: Tracing Shah ʿAbbās’s Book Endowments to Ardabil in Istanbul
Shah ʿAbbās I, known as “the Great,” was a pivotal figure in Iranian history, ruling from 1588 to 1629. His enduring legacy includes numerous endowed manuscripts, which reflect his charitable endeavors during his over forty-year reign. Between approximately 1600 and 1629, Shah ʿAbbās demonstrated his piety through donations of valuable items from his palace in Isfahan to prominent shrines across Iran, including those in Ardabil, Mashhad, Qom, and Ray. Many of these endowments consisted of rare volumes from the imperial collection. While the manuscripts bestowed upon Mashhad remain on site, others given to the shrine of Shaykh Ṣafī al-Dīn in Ardabil are now dispersed throughout institutions in Tehran, Saint Petersburg, Istanbul, and select European and North American locations. My study investigates the origins of a selection of these manuscripts by consulting manuscript notes, archival records, library catalogues, and drawing on fresh perspectives offered by recent studies by Tanındı (2024) and Vasilyeva/Yastrebova (2024). Specifically, it explores whether these works came directly from the royal library, the shah’s private holdings, or had been possessed by high-ranking officials prior to entering the Ardabil shrine library. Additionally, this inquiry seeks to enhance our understanding of the scope and diversity of endowed manuscripts underpinning Safavid cultural practices and intellectual currents around 1600. Due to practical considerations, the focus lies primarily on analyzing the Ardabil manuscripts currently housed in Istanbul repositories, particularly in the Süleymaniye Library, whose relatively small but hitherto understudied number offers a promising avenue for scholarly exploration.
Yui Kanda (ILCAA, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies): Shāh ʿAbbās I’s Manuscript Endowments and Shrine Practices: Early Kufic Qurʾāns Endowed to Mashhad and Ardabil
This study examines the religious and cultural policies of Shāh ʿAbbās I (r. 1588–1629) in the aftermath of the decade-long Uzbek occupation of Mashhad (1589–1598) by analyzing Arabic, Persian, and Chagatai manuscripts that he endowed to Sufi and Shiʿite shrines in Ardabil, Mashhad, Qom, and Ray on various occasions from his royal library and their enduring legacy. Particular attention is given to a group of ninth- and twelfth-century Qurʾāns written in Kufic (angular) script on parchment, allegedly bearing the signatures of the Twelver Imāms (e.g., Imām ʿAlī b. Abī Ṭālib); These Qurʾāns were endowed to the mausoleum of Imām Riżā in Mashhad in 1599/1600 and 1600/1, likely during Shāh ʿAbbās’s pilgrimages, and later to the mausoleum of Shaykh Ṣafī al-Dīn in Ardabil in 1627/8.
While studies in Islamic art history have examined the Safavid adaptation of early Kufic Qurʾāns, as exemplified by this group, since the mid-2000s, research into their content, physical features, potential functions, placements within mausolea, hierarchy in comparison to other manuscripts, post-Safavid reception, and Shāh ʿAbbās I’s strategic decisions in selecting and endowing these and other manuscripts to specific destinations over time (e.g., the Ṣafvat al-Ṣafā, endowed to Ardabil in 1612/3) remains insufficiently explored.
To address these gaps, this study draws on a diverse range of sources, including paratextual elements of the manuscripts (e.g., inspection records), inventory records from the treasuries of mausolea spanning the Safavid to Qajar periods, the Ottoman land registry, and contemporaneous treatises on calligraphy, biographies of ʿulamāʾ, and dynastic chronicles. By analysing these materials, the study sheds new light on the strategic significance of Shāh ʿAbbās I’s manuscript endowments, their role in consolidating his religious and political authority, and their broader contributions to the practices of endowment, usage, and preservation of manuscripts in shrine treasuries over subsequent periods.
Elahe Mahbub (Documentation Centre of Astan-e Qods Library, Mashhad) and Behzad Nemati (The Islamic Research Foundation, Astan-e Qods, Mashhad): Barrasī-yi kohan-tarīn fehrest-hā-ye bejāmande az Kitābkhāne-ye Astān-e Qods-e Rażavī (in Persian)
بررسی کهنترین فهرستهای بجامانده از کتابخانۀ آستان قدس رضوی
دو مجموعه سند بجا مانده از موجودی کتابخانۀ حرم امام رضا در مشهد (کتابخانۀ آستان قدس رضوی) مربوط به سالهای 1007 تا 1011 از قدیمیترین فهرستهای کتابخانههای کهن ایران است. فهرستنویسی که به عنوان اقدام اساسی در جهت شناخت، حفاظت و مدیریت منابع هر کتابخانه تلقی میشود، در کتابخانۀ آستان قدس زیر عنوانهای «عرض»، «سند صاحبجمعي» و «فهرست» تعریف شده است. این اسناد که از اسناد تشکیلات اداری حرم به شمار میرود، شامل 142 برگه است که در یک مقطع تاریخی بسیار مهم تنظیم شده و از وضعیت کتابخانه پس از بحران بزرگ تسلط ده سالۀ ازبکان در خراسان و مشهد و آغاز دورۀ شکوفای عباس اول صفوی، اطلاعات ارزشمندی به ما میدهد. این فهرستها موجودی قرآن و کتاب کتابخانه را به صورت طبقهبندی شده، به همراه برخی اطلاعات دیگر از نسخهها گزارش میکند و علاوه بر آن، اطلاعاتی از وسایل کتابخانه نیز ارائه میدهد. مقالۀ حاضر به استخراج و بررسی دادههای برآمده از این دو فهرست میپردازد و تلاش میکند از مجموع این دادهها، بر شناخت اندک ما از وضعیت کتابخانه در چهار سده قبل بیفزاید؛ ازجمله دربارۀ چگونگی تأمین منابع و اطلاعات مربوط به واقفان نسخهها، روش نسخهشناسی و کتابداری، توصیف، دستهبندی و بازیابی اطلاعات و نگهداری و مرمّت کتابها. نیز نگاهی به گزارشهای تاریخی از وضعیت منابع پس از حملۀ ازبکان خواهد داشت و آن را با دادههای این اسناد خواهد سنجید.
Andrew Peacock (University of St Andrews): The Library of the Eighteenth Century Mughal Prince Acchai Sahib
Research on the central Islamic lands has lately emphasised the importance of studying library catalogues as a source for intellectual history, as shown by the recent contribution of Konrad Hirshler on medieval Syria and several recent publications devoted to the catalogue of the Ottoman palace library of the time of Beyazid II. Yet for other parts of the Islamic world such research remains underdeveloped. While no equivalent catalogue of the Mughal imperial library has survived, quite a number of library catalogues from Islamic South Asia have survived. In this presentation I focus on one neglected such catalogue, which is of particular interest as it predates the colonial environment in which most of the others were compiled, potentially affecting their contents. This is the catalogue of the library of the Mughal prince Acchai Sahib, also known as Buland Akhtar, brother of the emperor Muhammad Shah (r. 1718-1748), now preserved in the Bodleian Library as MS Ouseley Add 10, and compiled by one Sharaf ‘Ali in 1211/1797. The catalogue, presumably composed posthumously, sheds light on not simply on the contents and their classification, but also the linguistic diversity and hierarchy of mss, with not just Arabic and Persian but more surprisingly Pushto also represented, and individual mss picked out as being autographs or because of the prestige of their provenance. The catalogue is thus valuable as it offers an unprecedented insight into Mughal book collecting practices, and not previously been studied.