Book Description

Excerpt from A Catalogue of the Arabic, Persian and Hindu'sta'ny Manuscripts, Vol. 1: Of the Libraries of the King of Oudh, Compiled Under the Orders of the Government of India On the 6th December, 1847, I was honored with the orders of the Government of India appointing me an Extra Assistant to the Resident at Lucnow, as a temporary measure, for the purpose of cataloguing the extensive collection of works in Arabic and Persian literature in the king of Oudh's libraries. Among my instructions was the following, "you need not confine yourself exclusively to the king's libraries, but you can undertake, as opportunity offers, the examination of some of the best private collections in that city, which are supposed to contain many rare and valuable works." I arrived at Lucnow on the 3rd of March, 1848, and I left it on the 1st January, 1850. One month I had other duties to perform and near three months I was sick. The time which I devoted to cataloguing was about eighteen months. During this time I examined about 10,000 volumes. Very many of them were duplicates; but as no kind of arrangement exists, particularly in the Topkhanah library, and as it is impossible to recollect whether or not a note has been taken of a book, duplicates took just as much time as new works. There are also many defective volumes which after much search for a name, date, or title, I was obliged to throw away. Supposing then that I had worked every day ten hours (and to do this day after day in a tropical climate is a physical impossibility) I could have devoted only half an hour to the examination of each volume. I was assisted in my labour by 'alyy Akbar of Panypat. He was a pupil of the Dilly College, and had not yet completed his course of study when I took him to Lucnow. I did not expect more of him than that he would copy for me such passages as I might mark; but he soon entered into the spirit of the work and was of very great service. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.