Peshawar University Campus Libraries, Treasury of Central Asian Manuscripts

Abstract

The cultural and literary heritage of a nation can be found in their writings. Moreover, the development of art, science and literature can be assessed historically through the use of these writing available in manuscript form. They throw enough light on the times in which they were written. It is a record of the knowledge, aesthetic literary and creative skill of the period in which they were written. Manuscripts are therefore essentially thought to be the most important element in tracing on the human heritage.
Since earlier knowledge along with religion came to this part of the world through Central Asia, therefore most rather all such records are available in the prevailing languages of the time like Arabic, Persian, Turkish or Pashto.
The University Campus5 at Peshawar is a conglomeration center of knowledge. Emerging with Islamia College in the early part of the last century, it had by now grown into four universities with couple of dozen institutions. The manuscript repositories amongst them are mainly Islamia College (now university) and the University of Peshawar. They contain, to my assessment, some of the rarest collections on socio-scientific knowledge besides religion and ethics. The total number of manuscripts in the Islamia College Library is twelve hundred and seventy7. This rare collection has been donated by Ghulam Jillani and his family soon after the establishment of the college library8. Center Library University of Peshawar also contains some of the rare manuscripts on different subjects9. Maximum number of manuscripts among these has been donated by Ghulam Samdani. The total number of this collection is seven hundred and twelve. Pashto Academy library is another place of manuscripts collection on the campus having more than nine hundred manuscript collection mostly donated by Ghulam Samdani.