Persianate manuscripts of the Universities of Aberdeen and Glasgow: Part 1
Scotland has a proud tradition of university education. Whereas by the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 England only hosted the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge, Scotland boasted five of its own despite its small size. These were the Universities of St Andrews, Edinburgh, Glasgow, King’s College of Aberdeen, and Marischal College of Aberdeen – the latter two merging to form the University of Aberdeen in 1860.
Unsurprisingly, many graduates of these Universities sought employment in Britain’s expanding colonial Empire and manuscripts donated to University Libraries became a popular way for alumni to support their alma mater. But whereas the thousands of manuscripts in the collections of Oxford and Cambridge have frequently underlain modern Islamic scholarship, and even those of St Andrews and Edinburgh have enjoyed a fair degree of curatorial attention, the collections of Glasgow and Aberdeen have received far less attention. Though inserts in the manuscripts themselves testify to the attentions of a number of famous historical British Orientalists, neither University has integrated their collections with the UK Union Catalogue of Islamic Manuscript, Fihrist.
The Hunterian Library
Of the two, the collection of the University of Glasgow Library is the larger containing approximately 158 manuscripts in “Oriental” languages. This is formed out of the collection of the Hunterian Museum and Library, the nucleus of which was formed from the bequest of Dr. William Hunter (d. 1783). Hunter’s personal collection contained a number of valuable Islamic MSS, but his bequest and the subsequent establishment of the Hunterian Museum in 1807 sparked further important donations.
A fair catalogue of these was published in 1908 as part of a unified catalogue of the manuscripts of the Hunterian Library, and this helpfully records several of the manuscript notes and seals. The section dealing with “Oriental” manuscripts was completed by Thomas H. Muir, Lecturer on Arabic at the University of Glasgow. The list in this catalogue is more detailed than the entries provided in two research articles Weir published on the collection for the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society. In the second of these articles, Weir notes his debt to E. J. W. Gibb for interpreting the Persian and Turkish MSS, and Gibb’s notes remain on inserts attached to many collection items.
This post will focus on three manuscripts with Persianate links, each of which speaks to Britain’s interaction with South Asia and the Imperial project more broadly.
The first is MS Hunter 168, a copy of the Qur’an bound in embossed red leather. Though written in Arabic, the manuscript contains frequent readers’ marks in red ink in Persian and some interlinear translation. These readers’ marks tend to be short pietistic injunctions, promising the reader a certain positive outcome if they read the annotated sura a certain number of times. The first and last folios of this Qur’an are damaged and the ending is missing. As a result, the Qur’an is missing the final colophon which would normally tell us when and where it was originally copied.
What makes this Qur’an remarkable beyond its mysterious origins is the donor’s note gifting it to the Hunterian Museum. There are two of these, the first is among the front endpapers and is damaged while the second sits among the back endpapers. Much of the first is effaced but the words “Macquarie of”, “33rd Regt.” and the date “5th April 181?” are visible. The second is much more legible and reads:
“From L. Macquarie
33rd Regiment
To the
Hunterian Museum
Glasgow
__________
Windsor
23rd June 1813”
From this short note we can learn much about the manuscript’s likely history. The obvious candidate for our “L. Macquarie” is Major General Lachlan Macquarie, fifth governor of New South Wales, Australia from 1810 – 1821. One of the most celebrated and controversial figures in early Colonial Australian history, he was instrumental in reasserting government authority over the unruly society of early New South Wales. While the reference to “Windsor” might at first sight suggest this identification is erroneous, Windsor was in fact the name of a settlement founded by Macquarie in New South Wales, now located on the outskirts of modern Sydney. Macquarie had grown up on the Inner Hebrides on the West Coast of Scotland, and it was presumably this familial connection to the region which explains his desire to support the foundation of the new Museum, despite his service on the other side of the world.
The clearly marked legend of “33rd Regiment” may offer clues as to how Macquarie originally acquired the manuscript. As the namesake of one of Australia’s most prominent universities, Macquarie is a very well researched figure, and we know that he was never commissioned as an officer in the 33rd Regiment. In 1813, he was in command of a detachment in New South Wales, but this unit was part of the 73rd Regiment with whom he had long been associated. He had however previously served alongside the 33rd Regiment during the Seringapatam Campaign of 1798-9 under the Duke of Wellington in South India. This campaign resulted in the death of the ruler of Mysore Tipu Sultan, and the expropriation of his large library by British forces. While the major part of this library was donated to British collections or auctioned off, it is eminently plausible that Macquarie should have taken part of this collection as personal booty in his capacity as one of Wellington’s senior commanders. We know that he received £1,300 as prize money for his part in the campaign. A number of spectacular Qur’ans owned by Tipu Sultan survive in British Libraries and, while our manuscript is not as spectacular as these, they do likewise exhibit frequent Persian marginalia. Glasgow has one Qur’an originally owned by Tipu Sultan which was donated to it directly by the East India Company in 1806, MS Gen 1231, and Macquarie’s Qur’an may well come from the same original source.
Alternative possibilities do however present themselves, especially if we understand “33rd Regiment” as being an error for regiments like the 73rd, 77th, or 86th with which we know Macquarie to have been associated. Macquarie undertook two tours of India, from 1788 – 1800, and from 1805 – 1806. After the latter tour, he returned to the United Kingdom in 1809 via Basra, Baghdad, a caravan across Iran to the Caspian Sea, and then a journey across Russia and the Baltic. He was also involved in the British expedition against French forces in Egypt from 1801-2. While the Qur’an’s Persian marginalia are suggestive of an acquisition made in Iran or India, we currently lack the evidence necessary to make such a claim with overwhelming confidence let alone to securely link it with the Seringapatam Campaign.
In spite of these uncertainties around its acquisition, the manuscript remains a remarkable relic of the early Colonial history of New South Wales. Little systematic work has been completed on early Islamic manuscripts taken to the continent in the personal collections of British officials. With such an early date however, this may well be the first Qur’an to have reached New South Wales, and even the first Qur’an which can securely place on the entire Australian continent. The aboriginal people of Arnhem Land are believed to have interacted with the Muslim traders of modern Makassar, but a surviving Qur’an which actually crossed the Straits via this route has yet to be identified.
The second manuscript to discuss is MS Hunter 51, about the origins of which we can be far more exact. This is a unique history of the Maratha dynasty in Persian, written by an unknown Indian author. We can speak with such confidence about its origins because it was
commissioned by James Kerr, an officer serving with the British East India Company from 1771. By working in collaboration with the unnamed Hindustani-speaking author, Kerr overcame his limited grasp of Persian to translate the text into English. Kerr received the text in 1779, and then published his translation in London in 1782 entitling it A Short Historical Narrative of the Rise and Rapid Advancement of the Mahrattah State To the Present Strength and Consequence it has Acquired in the East. He explains the circumstances of its commissioning and his translation in the introduction.
The Marathas were the pre-dominant power in northern and western India at this time, and the first Anglo-Maratha war had ended inconclusively in 1782. Positioning himself as an expert on the Marathas was thus a smart career move on Kerr’s part, and he would ultimately rise to the rank of General. Kerr states that his collaborator used three Persian histories to write his composition – the famous Tarikh-i Firishta, an unnamed history of Aurangzeb, and an unnamed history of Bahadur Shah son of Aurangzeb – as well as oral accounts for more recent events. The text is regularly annotated with several subheadings in English, likely serving as aide-memoires for Kerr as he produced his translation.
Concerning the manuscript’s journey to Glasgow, the name “Tho. Macintyre” is written in the back flyleaf followed by several question marks. Who this Macintyre was and whether he was the donor cannot be judged, but the author of an anonymous handwritten note with the manuscript claims he was gifted it by a Mr White, Professor of Arabic at Oxford. This must refer to Professor Joseph White (d. 1814), who was well known for collaborating with figures connected to the East India Company. We are therefore able to follow the manuscript with an impressive degree of accuracy from its conception in India to its presumable arrival in Glasgow in the first half of the 19th century.
Our final manuscript again entwines British history and the fascination of British colonial officials in the politics of Indian dynasties. This is MS Hunter 429, a copy of the first volume of Tazkirat al-Salatin Chaghata written by Muhammad Hadi Kamvar Khan, a Hindu convert to Islam who worked for the Mughal Emperors. It is a Persian language history of the Mughal royal house, chronicling its rulers from their putative ancestors Chinggis Khan and Timur to the time of the text’s completion in 1724-5.
The manuscript is almost entirely “clean”, i.e. without any marginalia to give us an idea of its transmission history. Our understanding of its origins therefore relies entirely on the manuscript’s colophon. This states that the copy was made by one Nahir Singh, son of Risak Lal, son of Kalal Singh, of the Kayastha caste. Fascinatingly, Nahir Singh tells us that he made the copy on the orders of an Englishman “Mr Mitchell” on the 4th October 1727 in Patna. This would make the manuscript the second oldest known copy in existence, after an early draft by Kamwar Khan from 1723 held by the British Library. Though the identity of “Mr Mitchell” remains mysterious, the fact he commissioned a copy at such an early date speak to the hunger of Britons active in the subcontinent for up-to-date information on Indian politics and history.
A final twist to the manuscript’s story comes in a later paper insert placed within its endpapers. This carefully translates the colophon into English and is signed “H. Beveridge, Uddingston, 26.9.97”. This note was made by the British Orientalist Henry Beveridge (d. 1929), who had himself worked in the Indian Civil Service for over twenty years. Though Henry Beveridge himself is little known beyond students of Persian and Indian history, his son William Beveridge (d. 1963) is far more famous. He was an economist and Liberal party politician whose 1942 report (commonly known as the Beveridge Report) served as the intellectual foundation of the welfare state introduced in Britian after the Second World War. Persian manuscripts and Indian history sometimes have far closer links to British domestic history then might be imagined.
Bibliography
James Kerr, A Short Historical Narrative of the Rise and Rapid Advancement of the Mahrattah State: To the Present Strength and Consequence It Has Acquired in the East, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.
James Robson, “Catalogue of the Oriental MSS in the Library of the University of Glasgow”, in Studia Islamica et Orientalia II, Glasgow: Glasgow University Oriental Society, 1945: pp. 116-37.
T. H. Weir, “Art. XIX.—The Arabic, Syriac, and Hebrew Manuscripts in the Hunterian Library in the University of Glasgow.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, v. 31, no. 4 (1899): pp. 739–56.
T. H. Weir, “Art. XXIX.—Translation of an Arabic Manuscript in the Hunterian Collection, Glasgow University.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, v. 33, no. 4 (1901): 809–25.
T. H. Weir, “XXII. The Persian and Turkish Manuscripts in the Hunterian Library of the University of Glasgow.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, v. 38, no. 3 (1906): pp. 595–609.
James Robson, “Catalogue of the Oriental MSS in the Library of the University of Glasgow”, in Studia Islamica et Orientalia II, Glasgow: Glasgow University Oriental Society, 1945: pp. 116-37.
David Weston, “Manuscripts and archives relative to South Asia in Glasgow University Library”, SALG Newsletter, v. 35 (2003), pp. 6-11.
John Young, A catalogue of the manuscripts in the Library of the Hunterian Museum in the University of Glasgow, Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons, 1908. (The “Oriental” MSS catalogued by T. H. Weir are listed on pp. 451 – 523).
The Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie archive – Lachlan and Elizabeth Macquarie Archive: Lachlan Macquarie – Biography (mq.edu.au)
