Hazrat Pir Mohammad Shah Library

The Hazrat Peer Mohammed Shah Library is located at Pir Muhammad Shah Road, Pankore Naka, Ahmadabad 380001, in the state of Gujarat, India. One of the very famous writer Professor Mohidduin Bombaywala is handling this library as a director since last 15 years. One of the oldest libraries in India, it has a collection of rare original manuscripts in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Sindhi and Turkish languages.

Introduction: The library is located within the precincts of the tomb-shrine complex of Pir Muhammad Shah, who was born in Bijapur in 1688 and migrated to Ahmadabad in 1711, where he died in 1749. An introduction is found in Muhammad Zuber Qureshi, “The History of Hazrat Pir Muhammad Shah at Ahmadabad,” Islam in India: Studies and Commentaries, vol. 2, edited by Christian W. Troll, (New Delhi: Vikas,1985), pp. 282–300

History:

Pir Mohammad Shah was a Hussaini Sayyed and a well-respected sufi who lived in Ahmedabad during the rule of Aurangzeb. His father died before his birth and his uncle, Abd ur-Rehman, trained the young Mohammad Shah in religious scholarship and practical Sufism. The Pir was a great lover of learning and possessed an extraordinary memory powers. During his lifetime, the Pir and his murids had amassed a huge collection of manuscrips and books of great academic and spiritual value. These are housed in the "qutubkhana" (library). Pir Mohammad Shah was a bi-lingual poet himself and wrote profusely in Persian and Dakhani. Among his many works, the best known is Nur ush-Shuyukh in Persian which is versified history in the Mutaqarib meter.

Catalog(s):

Arabi, Farsi, Urdu Makhtootat ki wadahati fihrist, 10 vols., (Ahmadabad:Pir Muhammad Shah Dargah Sharif Trust, 1998. A review on this catalogue is found in Ma,arif (Azamgarh) June 1998: 479–480. Number of manuscripts: 2000 Works on the history or individual manuscripts in the Library: Shaykh Farid al-Din Burhanpuri, d. 1998, “Kutub khanah-yi Dargah Hazrat Pir Muhammad Shah,” Nawa-i Adab (October 1955); Taher, Amin Ahmed Khan, and Muhammed Burhanuddin, “Dargah Libraries in India: A Comparative Study,” International Library Journal 18 (1986): 337–345; Z. A. Desai, “Some Rare Seal-Bearing Persian Manuscripts in the Hazrat P. M. Dargah Library,” Indo-Iranica 46, l-lv (1993): 52–73.]]