SUBJECT CATALOGUE OF THE RAREST CENTRAL ASIA MANUSCRIPTS IN PUBLIC SECTOR UNIVERSITIES’ LIBRARIES OF PESHAWAR

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 Campus 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. Attempts have been made by scholars on the religio-ethical branches with no quest on manuscriputal knowledge on science and technology. An attempt has been made in this research at the thesis level to introduce this literature (socio-scientific) to the modern researchers and also to make it public to them in appropriate subject catalogue form in the general catalogues of the concerned libraries. The study tried to save the cultural Heritage / History and to identify the literary achievements of Muslim scientists from the area. It will not only highlight the importance of these works but with the availability of proper subject catalogue easy access to these literary works will be possible. The research tried to fill out the information gap by tracing these manuscripts in other parts of the world to dig out the metadata. The study will highlight all other relevant work by Muslim scientist to open new areas for the coming researchers.