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The Urdu Research Centre Collection

In the Words of the Collector

In this excerpt, Muhammad Abdus Samad Khan describes his collection as he gives B.B.C. journalist Mr. Raza Ali Abadi a tour:

Here are about three-and-a-half-thousand women's magazines. And over here are about 250 Urdu books of humor. After that there is drama and books on the theater. Below that there are ancient dastans. Probably no one has as large a collection of dastans as this. On that side are religious books; here, history and there, the tazkirahs. Again, nobody probably has as big a collection of tazkirahs either. The total quantity is about 275. Over here are various magazines. They have been shelved wherever space could be found. Then this cupboard is reserved for biographies of the Prophet and other biographies and autobiographies. On that side are books by ancient ghazal poets, or anthologies of their poetry. And on this side are poets writing nazms, masnavis, dastans, and so forth. Most of these belong to the nineteenth century and are in manuscript form. For example, these 28 manuscripts belong to Chiragh Ali. In the same manner, here is a whole file of the Nizam of Hyderabad's poetry, written in his own hand, which used to be sent from "King Kothi" to his ustad Jaleel for corrections and then published in newspapers. Then there is a file containing Kishan Prashad's poetry which has been corrected by Haidar Yar Jang and Ziya Yar Jang. Similarly, other cupboards are filled with manuscripts, not all of which have been examined yet. Now here are magazines for which I have made separate files. For example, Nigar has a separate file, and I have the complete set, from 1922 until the present date. In the same manner, I also have the Urdu journal from Aurangabad called Urdu, which was later published from Pakistan. I have the complete file from 1956 onwards. Here there is whole collection of books on Ghalib, and over there, on Iqbal. There are about 125 special issues by various magazines on Ghalib. There are nearly the same number of magazines which published special issues on Iqbal. This special corner of the room is devoted to books that have been autographed by their authors. There are also several interesting statements written below the autographs. Over there are books on criticism, research, reference, and various reports. For example, this is the Muslim Educational Conference Report of 1890-1904, the complete reports. In the same manner, reports from Aligarh and the speeches at Aligarh are also collected here. Over there are travelogues and here, catalogs. I believe I have most of the catalogs of all Indian and Pakistani book collections.

Here are the manuscripts. On the top they are all in Urdu, below that, in Persian, and underneath that, in Arabic. And over here, these three cupboards are full of miscellaneous magazines. This is rubbish that I have not been able to clear up yet. There are too many magazines. I have only been able to make a list of about 22,000 issues. I believe you will find one or two copies of all the important nineteenth-century magazines in this collection. Some of these are not available anywhere else. I have over five years of issues for the magazine called Tahzib ul-Akhlaq, brought out by Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan. Similarly, I have the complete files of Maulana Azad's al-Hilal and al-Balagh. There is also a complete set of Zamana magazine which no one else has.

Excerpt from Voh Makainik Sahib (The Mechanic), an interview by Raza Ali Abidi, broadcast on the British Broadcasting Corporation's Urdu Service in 1975, included in The Urdu Research Centre, Hyderabad: A Souvenir, published in the late 1980s. Paraphrased and translated by Omar Qureshi.

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Muhammad Abdus Samad Khan

Muhammad Abdus Samad Khan collected Urdu books, manuscripts and journals for over 40 years. In 1996 his collection was purchased by the Urdu Research Library Consortium and moved to its current home in Hyderabad.