KARACHI, March 21: The National Museum of Pakistan has not only kept its collection of manuscripts, the largest in the country, in poor condition but has also not acquired a new manuscript for the past 10 years.
Established in 1951, the National Museum has 6,000 Persian manuscripts, 3,500 Arabic manuscripts, 350 hand-written copies of the Quran, 600 Urdu manuscripts, 250 Punjabi manuscripts, 70 Sindhi manuscripts, 60 Pushto manuscripts, and 40 Bengali/Sanskrit/Gormukhi manuscripts.
National Museum assistant curator Mohammad Shah Bokhari, who is also officer in charge of the manuscript section, told Dawn that the department also possessed 900 specimens of calligraphy, 800 miniature paintings, 50,000 black-and-white historical photographs and as many negatives, 300 hand-written royal decrees, 6,000 documents on the freedom movement, 50 ivory paintings and 35 illustrated manuscripts.
"The oldest manuscript at the National Museum was written in 473 AH (AD 1080/1081). It is an important book on mysticism in Persian. Titled Al-Ta'arruf wal-Tasawwuf, it was written by Abu Bakr Mohammad bin Ibrahim Bukhari Kalabazi, who died in 380 AH," he said.
Mr Bokhari deplored that the advisory and acquisition committee of the National Museum had acquired no new manuscript since 1994. The former director-general of the archaeology department, Ahmad Nabi Khan, recalled that the government had formed the acquisition committee in the early 1950s.
The committee, tasked to purchase manuscripts from individuals and organizations after considerable scrutiny, had such luminaries like Dr I.H. Qureishi and Hassamuddin Rashdi.
"The committee did an excellent job. The National Museum started with seven or eight manuscripts obtained from the now defunct Victoria Museum. It built up such an impressive collection entirely on its own after Partition," he said.
The chairman of Karachi University's Urdu department, Dr Moinuddin Aqeel, said the manuscripts were not properly maintained by the National Museum. A collector of manuscripts and their microfilms, Dr Aqeel said: "In museums abroad, the curator first teaches a beginner how to handle a manuscript, how to turn over yellowed pages and how to place the hand-written document on a table.
In some cases, a scholar is photographed and has to deposit his identity card or passport before he is allowed to consult precious manuscripts. No such precautionary measure is taken by the National Museum."
It is little wonder, then, that the National Museum has lost a couple of manuscripts over the years. One of the lost manuscripts was an 18th century copy of Masnawi Sehar-ul-Bayan by Mir Hasan Dehlawi.
According to Jaiza-i-Makhutat-i-Urdu, a well-researched book by Mushfiq Khwaja containing painstakingly collated information about some 200 manuscripts, the Masnawi (catalogue 1961-1676) was acquired by the National Museum in 1961. The book, which has 96 pages and was composed in the first quarter of the 20th century, has at least 42 miniature paintings.
When contacted, the assistant director at the archaeology department, Sarwat Baig, recalled that the manuscript had been lost in 1980. "I remember taking the manuscript of the Masnawi, as well as many other exhibits, to the Lok Virsa Museum in Islamabad for an Islamic art and architecture exhibition, which was inaugurated by the late Gen Zia-ul-Haq.
The exhibition continued for two months. After the exhibition, the authorities at the Lok Virsa Museum said they had lost the manuscript. An inquiry was instituted which identified the official responsible for the loss of the manuscript. While the manuscript was purchased for Rs2,500 in 1956, the official had to pay Rs25,000," he said.
The director-general of the archaeology department, Fazal Dad Kakar, told Dawn that efforts were being made to increase the annual grant of the National Museum. He added that the museum had suffered because of a shortage of financial resources.