Literary notes: Three research works on Urdu and Persian.
WE are not a nation of bookworms and have never been. Yet there is a considerable percentage of population that loves to read even in this age of technology-based distractions.
Despite a general decline in reading habits in the country and a less-than-desired level of readers' interest in research works, new Urdu books based on research keep pouring in. One of the reasons is a recent trend among the students of Urdu to get a higher degree - an MPhil or a PhD. This has definitely increased the demand for books based on research and/or critical studies.
A positive sign indeed and the scholars penning such works are usually a committed lot that does not care if they are appreciated or not, but serious minded readers, especially those whose butter and bread is research and teaching, should take at least a little interest in new research works being published.
So here are three new books that have some aspects of research and Urdu and Persian:
Kulliyaat-e-Makaateeb-e-Nazr Sabri
Ghulam Muhammad Nazr Sabri (1923-2013) was apparently a librarian at Attock College, but was, in fact, a great walking library himself. He was a scholar and poet of Urdu and Persian, too. Sabri had spent almost 60 years of his life on tracing, discovering, reading, editing and evaluating rare books especially Persian manuscripts.
Dr Arif Naushahi, a well-known scholar of Persian, was very close to him as both shared the same love of books and Persian manuscripts. For about 37 years both the scholars were in touch through letters and exchanged hundreds of letters. Now about 100 letters written by Nazr Sabri and addressed to Dr Naushahi have been collected, edited and annotated with meticulousness by Dr Abdul Aziz Sahir.
Most of the letters discuss issues related to manuscripts, their copies in different libraries and museums around the world, their editing, authors and calligraphers of rare works. In his scholarly intro, Naushahi says: 'Though basically Nazr Sabri was a poet and librarian and lived in Attock, a city not particularly known for its scholars or scholarship, Sabri was immersed in reading, writing and researching on issues that even the professors in universities in big cities could not think of.'
Dr Sahir in his preface has succinctly described the life and works of an erudite scholar that Sabri was. But the way Sahir Sahib has compiled and annotated these letters speaks volumes of his own erudition. Since the letters have many scholarly points that need to be...
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