A BIBLIOGRAPHY is “a list of sources referred to in a particular work” and “a list of the books of a specific author or on a specific subject”, says Concise Oxford English Dictionary .
Categorising books and other sources of information according to a system --- for instance, author-wise, subject-wise or title-wise --- is called enumerative bibliography. Bibliographies are a blessing for researchers, writers, teachers and students because bibliographies come in handy as a guide to primary and secondary sources on a specific discipline or subject.
Compiling bibliographies has a long history and the practice is said to have begun at the Great Library of Alexandria, established in 3rd Century BC. Here Callimachus (died circa 240 BC), an employee of the library, compiled the world’s first-ever bibliography, listing in 120 volumes the library’s holdings subject-wise. The library books were in fact papyrus scrolls.
In Islamic world, Ibn-i-Nadeem (died 998 AD) compiled a bibliography of about 10,000 Arabic books. Named Kitaabul Fehrist and popularly known as Al-Fehrist , or The List , it also gives brief biographies of about 2,000 authors. But, ironically, not much is known about Ibn-i-Nadeem’s own life. Al-Fehrist lists handwritten books on various disciplines, including sorcery, talisman and amulets ( ta’aveez ). Muhammad Ishaq Bhatti translated Al-Fehrist into Urdu and Lahore’s Saqafat-i-Islamia published it in 1969. Two other editions followed.
What perturbs one is the fact that the brilliant example set by Ibn-i-Nadeem was not amply emulated and till the beginning of the 20th Century, the bibliographies of books and other sources on Islam and allied subjects were just not enough in numbers and scholars had to sift through huge piles of published material just to find a few relevant works.
It was James Douglas Pearson (1911-1997), a librarian and bibliographer at London University’s School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), who began jotting down works on Islam and prepared a bibliography. As Pearson realised that research papers on Islam and relevant fields published in research journals are not properly indexed and students and researchers sometimes write on the topics that have already been researched and written about, he prepared a bibliographic index, listing some 25,000 research papers. When other bibliographers ultimately prepared such bibliographies and indexes on computer, all were merged with Pearson’s work and a huge database was created. Named Index Islamicus Online, it is “the international classified bibliography of publications in European languages on all aspects of Islam and the Muslim World”, (https://bibliographies.brill.com/IIO/).
When it comes to life and teachings of Prophet Muhammad (PBUH), Muslims have always written with much love and conscientiousness. Writing on the Prophet’s (PBUH) life, his disposition, morals, practices and attributes is known as seerat . A very large number of works on seerat have been penned during the last 14 centuries in scores of languages, but Arabic, Persian and Urdu have surpassed all of them in this regard.
Arabic is said to have the largest body of works written on seerat and Dr Syed Azizur Rahman informed the audience at a gathering held last week at Karachi University’s Jameel Jalibi Research Library that a bibliography on published works in Arabic on seerat comprises three volumes. Azizur Rahman himself has compiled and published recently, in two volumes, a bibliography of Urdu books on seerat , with assistance from Muhammad Mohsin Mirza and Muhammad Uvais Shahid. Titled Jaam’e Urdu Kitabiyaat-i-Seerat and published by Karachi’s Aiwaan-i-Seerat, the bibliography lists 10,000 published Urdu works. It was always reckoned that Urdu has a great body of works on Islam and some scholars believe that now Urdu has surpassed Persian when it comes to published works on seerat and other topics relating to Islam.
Syed Azizur Rahman in his foreword has briefly described some early bibliographic works in Urdu. Makhzan was Urdu’s first magazine to have published an index of its contents. Some other periodicals followed the suit, such as, Zamana, Al-Hilaal, Ma’arif , and Burhaan , and published indexes --- referring to articles published in previous issues. These indexes would appear in these journals on yearly or half-yearly basis, adds Azizur Rahman.
Detailing the sources and methodology Azizur Rahman says the work records over 10,000 Urdu publications title-wise and despite not including unpublished works and research papers/articles/essays it is the most comprehensive bibliography on seerat in Urdu. Also, unlike some other seerat bibliographies, versified works on seerat and Haj travelogues are excluded. Several editions of the same book have been treated as one entry. Similarly, if a book comprises several volumes, they have been treated as one work, though specific marks have been put before such entries to distinguish various edition/s or volume/s.
Azizur Rahman is a scholar, editor, educator and in-charge of Regional Dawah Centre, Karachi, Sindh’s local arm of Dawah Academy of International Islamic University, Islamabad. He intends to publish a third volume of this bibliography, which will be prepared author-wise and subject-wise, also dividing the bibliography according to sub-headings.
Published in Dawn, October 14th, 2024
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