Persianate manuscripts of the Universities of Aberdeen and Glasgow: Part 2
The Islamic manuscript collections of the University of Aberdeen are comparatively small by the standards of historic British Universities and, perhaps due to the city’s isolated location within the country, have been largely overlooked by scholars. The history of the institution has also likely inhibited research, the University only forming in 1860 from the merger of King’s College and Marischal College which each possessed independent collections.
A complete catalogue of the collection has never been produced, yet inserts in several manuscripts show them to have received past scholarly attention, including by Sir Thomas Walker Arnold. A few of the most visually appealing items were profiled in the 2011 publication The Library and Archive Collections of the University of Aberdeen : an introduction and description. To make a rough estimate of the size of the collection, it contains about 25 Persian manuscripts, about 20 Arabic manuscripts, and a further 20 manuscripts in other “Oriental” languages from Turkish to Tibetan and Chinese. The University previously had a small Egyptology department, and a number of Arabic manuscripts and its ostraca collection may have been acquired in the course of the activities of these researchers. The majority of items appear to have entered the collection from the donations of alumni and from the private collections of former staff. No single donor appears to have gifted more than a handful of manuscripts however, and the diversity of the collection speaks to the global links of the University’s graduates. An institution which in the early 19th century might only graduate a few tens of students annually, it is therefore relatively easy to identify the names of donors appearing in our manuscripts with the names of students appearing in the University of Aberdeen’s graduation record.
The single best recorded item in the entire collection is the Qur’an attributed to Tipu Sultan, MS 2924. This extremely visually impressive and elaborate manuscript was part of a group of Qur’ans donated to British educational institutions after the fall of Tipu Sultan’s capital of Seringapatam in 1799 to British forces led by the Duke of Wellington. Other Qur’ans from this source have ended up in the Royal Collection and in the libraries of the Universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Glasgow and St Andrews. The donation of these Qur’ans occurred in 1806, after several years of internal political debate within the East India Company on what should be done with the manuscripts. The Qur’an contains the original letter of donation addressed to Roderick Macleod, Principal of Kings College Aberdeen, from Charles Wilkins, Librarian at East India House, dated 15th August 1806. This note even has a calculation for the cost of carriage and postage of the Qur’an scribbled on the back, adding up to 11 shillings and 10 pence!
Kings College Aberdeen’s inclusion among the exclusive group of universities granted a Tipu Sultan Qur’an is likely connected to the career of alumnus Matthew Lumsden (d. 1835). After his completing studies in Aberdeen, he went to India in 1794 and was appointed Assistant Professor in Arabic and Persian at the College of Fort William in 1803. The College of Fort William was established by the Duke of Wellington in Calcutta in 1800 as a training college in the languages of India for Company Officers. It had a key role in processing the manuscripts taken at Seringapatam, along with the Company’s College at Haileybury founded in 1806. While the claim of the University of Aberdeen’s online catalogue that Matthew Lumsden deposited the Qur’an at the Kings College Library in 1811 would seem to contradict the evidence of Charles Wilkins’ letter of 1806, it is nevertheless probable that Lumsden had a role in lobbying the Company Directors for Kings College to benefit from their donations.
From an aesthetic perspective, the Qur’an’s size and fine craftmanship are immediately appreciable. The red leather covers feature small gold panels which inscribe the profession of faith, praise of god, Muhammad, and the Rashidun Caliphs. One panel also has the legend “Sarkār Khudādādī”, the title by which Tipu Sultan referred to his kingdom and this inscription is commonly found on manuscripts bound for his library. Whether the Qur’an entered Tipu Sultan’s collection as an original commission, a purchase from the Indian book market, or by being looted from the collection of another South Indian leader is hard to say. Manuscripts entered his collection via all three routes, and this Qur’an does not have a colophon to identify how it was originally copied. There is a limited amount of commentary in red and black ink in both Arabic and Persian on early folios, but further marks or stamps which might indicate its origins are lacking.
The Qur’an is not the only text in Aberdeen with origins in Britian’s colonial conflicts. MS 1137/1 is an exceptionally rare copy of one of the first books ever printed in Afghanistan, entitled Qavāʿid Piyādigān-i Platon or “Infantry Platoon Drills”. I have found no record of another copy of the book outside of Afghanistan, and it is very likely the only copy in the UK. As its spectacular frontispiece tells us, it was printed in Kabul in 1872-3 on the royal press established there by Amir Shir Ali Khan, ruler of Afghanistan from 1868-79.
The work formed part of Amir Shir Ali Khan’s efforts to modernise his emerging country and protect it from growing British influence. The country had fought the first Anglo-Afghan War in 1838-42, and Amir Shir Ali Khan undertook several attempts to reform his military in advance of the Second Anglo-Afghan War in 1878-80.
In 1871, he brought printing presses to Kabul for the first time – previous Afghan government printing having been completed in Lahore. In that same year he had published the treatise Shihāb-i Thāqib, a treatise criticising Wahhabi doctrine. In 1873, the same press began the publication of Shams al-Nahār, Afghanistan’s first newspaper under the editorship of Abd al-Qadir Khan. Abd al-Qadir Khan is also credited as the translator of Qavāʿid Piyādigān-i Platon and its publication straddles those of these two other works.
The introduction to the text states that it was based on a British publication entitled “Pocketbook of Field Exercise”. This would appear to refer to one of the many editions of the standard British Army publication on Infantry Field Exercises, published under a variety of titles in consistently revised editions from at least 1859 onwards. Qavāʿid Piyādigān-i Platon is plainly based on these works but matches no single edition exactly. As a tool for training Afghan soldiers, it was likely near incomprehensible for any officer unfamiliar with the commands commonly used in the British Army. This is because it transliterates rather than translates many technical terms e.g. “Istandāt Īz” or “Stand at ease”. The Indian-style pronunciation which the book uses for these terms may suggest that its translation was completed from one of the editions of Field Exercises which the British Army published in Indian languages like Hindustani, or that it was produced with the help of a native speaker of one of these languages. Perhaps aware of the challenges Afghans would have had in reading the text, Qavāʿid Piyādigān-i Platon is populated with far more illustrations than its English model. There are over twenty of these, demonstrating rifle drill, how a soldier should position their feet when turning, and how to organise large formations of a parade ground. These illustrations give a wonderfully rare insight into how Afghans of the era perceived British soldiers and military tactics. The vivid colours of these images and the large moustaches of their subjects bring this Afghan fascination with formal British military culture to life, though Amir Shir Ali Khan’s efforts to raise a similar infantry force among Afghans were singularly unsuccessful.
Exactly how the text came to Aberdeen is a little harder to say. Several Scottish regiments served in the Second Anglo-Afghan War, including the 92nd Gordon Highlanders, and consequently many graduates of the University of Aberdeen and people with associations with the East of Scotland were veterans of the conflict. A further manuscript, MS 1073, was clearly taken as loot during the conflict and it may be that both it and the Qavāʿid Piyādigān-i Platon were donated to the University together.
MS 1073 is an obscure work lacking both title page, introduction, and colophon to aid in its identification. The manuscript is written in a fine nastaliq hand, the character of which would suggest it was copied in the late 17th century or later. It is a Persian exegesis of the 18th sura of the Qur’an, the Surat al-Kahf. It goes through the sura one small section at a time in red ink, translating each clause into Persian and explaining the meaning of the verse as it goes. There is a moderate degree of water damage to some pages, but what survives of the text is largely legible.
What makes this otherwise unremarkable exegesis so interesting is the ownership note in English on the back endpapers. This states that it was bought by a Surgeon W.B. (his surname is near illegible) at Sherpur, Kabul on 8th December 1879. The note tells us that the book had belonged to the library of Amir Yaqub Khan, the son and successor of Amir Shir Ali Khan who was forced to abdicate by British forces in Kabul in that some month. This note mentions this event and tells us that it was bought as part of a sale of Amir Yaqub Khan’s property in advance of his being taken to India as a political prisoner following his abdication. What is especially notable is that just a week following the writing of this note on the 15th December, the British were besieged in Sherpur by a counterattacking Afghan army. They repulsed a bloody attempt by the Afghans to storm Sherpur the following week in one of the major actions of the war, an action in which our surgeon was no doubt heavily involved. This note places the manuscript at the heart of these events, demonstrating how closely entwined the University of Aberdeen’s Persianate manuscript collection is to the rise of British military power on the subcontinent.
Bibliography
Iain Beavan, Peter Davidson and Jane Stevenson, The Library and Archive Collections of the University of Aberdeen: an introduction and description, Manchester: Manchester University Press with the University of Aberdeen, 2011.
Joshua Ehrlich, “Plunder and Prestige: Tipu Sultan’s Library and the Making of British India.” South Asia: Journal of South Asian Studies, 2020, v. 43, n. 3, pp. 478–92.
Johnathan L. Lee, Afghanistan: a history from 1260 to the present, London: Reaktion Books, 2018.
Christine Noelle-Karimi, “The Anti-Wahhabī reaction in nineteenth-century Afghanistan”, The Muslim World, 1995, v. 85, n. 1-2, pp. 23-48.
Abd al-Rasul Rahin, Tarikh-i Matbu’at-i Afghanistan: az Shams al-Nahar ta Jumhuriyat (1863-1973), Stockholm: Shura-yi Farhangi-i Afghanistan, 2007.
