Azamgarh Town
This article has been extracted from THE IMPERIAL GAZETTEER OF INDIA , 1908. OXFORD, AT THE CLARENDON PRESS. |
Note: National, provincial and district boundaries have changed considerably since 1908. Typically, old states, ‘divisions’ and districts have been broken into smaller units, units, and many tahsils upgraded to districts.Many units have since been renamed. Therefore, this article is being posted mainly for its historical value.
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Azamgarh Town
Head-quarters of Azamgarh District and tahsil, United Provinces, situated in 26 5' N. and 83 12' E., on the Tons and on a branch of the Bengal and North-Western Railway. Population (1901), 18,835. The town was founded about 1665 by Azam Khan, son of one of the Gautam Rajas referred to in the history of Azamgarh District. The dilapidated remains of the fort built by Azam Khan and a temple erected in the latter part of the eighteenth century are the only buildings of any age. Azamgarh is almost surrounded by a loop of the Tons, which is subject to heavy floods, occasionally causing great damage. Thus in 1894 it was estimated that the loss at Azamgarh was about Rs. 50,000, and the flood of 187 1 was still more serious. An embankment was made between 1896 and 1898, which affords pro- tection from floods, at a cost of Rs. 13,000. The chief public buildings are the male and female dispensaries, the town hall, the church, the Mission school, and the National high school. Azamgarh has been a municipality since 1884. During the ten years ending igor the income averaged Rs. 17,800 and the expenditure Rs. 17,000. In 1903-4 the income was Rs. 19,000, chiefly derived from octroi (Rs. 11,000); and the expenditure was Rs. 22,000. The chief manu- factures are sugar-refining and the weaving of cotton cloth. There are two high schools and seven primary schools, with a total attendance of 675.
After 1947
Darul Musannefin Shibli Academy
As in 2024
Mohammed Wajihuddin, April 14, 2024: The Times of India
Soon after his release from jail in the early 1920s, freedom fighter and Khilafat Movement leader Muhammad Ali Jauhar visited Allam Shibli Nomani’s grave in Azamgarh. He placed the dozens of garlands he had received on his way from Shahganj station at the grave, and prayed for Shibli, his teacher, great scholar-poet, biographer and historian.
Over a century later, sleeping under the shadow of a beautiful mosque in the premises of Darul Musannefin (house of authors) Shibli Academy, his dream, Shibli waits for another visitor-saviour like Jauhar who could rescue the 110-year-old Academy.
Established just three days after Shibli’s death in 1914, the Academy is a leading institution of Oriental, Islamic and Mediaeval Indian Studies, and Azamgarh’s pride. It occupies nine acres donated by Shibli and his relatives. The centrepiece is a beautiful whitewashed building housing a massive library of over 1.5 lakh books and around 700 manuscripts, some of them rare, and an office. Staff residences, the mosque and a conference hall stand apart.
Library A Treasure Trove
The Academy’s library is a treasure trove. Its spacious central hall is furnished with sofas and chairs. “Here have sat dozens of famous dignitaries,” says the Academy’s senior fellow Mohammed Umair-Us-Siddique Nadvi.
He shows rare books and manuscripts, including Persian translations of Ramayan and Mahabharat, and Sirr-e-Akbar, Persian translation of the Upanishads by Mughal prince Dara Shikoh, a great scholar put to death by his brother Aurangzeb. Another gem is Monisul Arwah, a book on Sufi saint Khwaja Moinuddin Chishti by Dara’s sister Jahanara. “This is our most prized possession which Shibli found at an old bookshop in Lucknow and bought for Rs 100 in 1906. It was very dear to him and travelled to an international exhibition of rare manuscripts in Paris,” says Nadvi.
There’s a section where testimonies of some famous visitors, including Mahatma Gandhi, Madan Mohan Malaviya and Maulana Azad, are kept. Motilal and Jawaharlal Nehru, father and son, stayed at the Academy several times during their visits to Azamgarh. When Gandhi first visited it in the 1920s, the Academy’s founding secretary, Maulana Syed Sulaiman Nadvi, showed him the library by lantern light since electricity supply was erratic.
Another famous visitor was Bi Amma, mother of Muhammad Ali Jauhar and Shaukat Ali, freedom fighters and Khilafat Movement leaders better known as the Ali brothers.
But while the Academy is Azamgarh’s pride, it faces a severe financial crunch. It has only one librarian, 48-year-old Saleem Javed, son of the Academy’s former director Maulana Ziauddin Islahi, to look after the vast collection.
“I do whatever I can, but it is not possible for one person to look after so many books. I opened my eyes on this campus and have been working here for around 25 years,” says Javed, brushing the dust off some books on a shelf.
The funding crunch prevents the management from hiring more staff and expediting translation and digitisation of titles from Arabic, Persian and Urdu into other languages. Since Urdu is shrinking, the library’s patrons have dwindled.
Preparing For Another Century
The Academy’s primary purpose is to protect and propagate the scientific, authentic history and rational interpretations of Islam. It also upholds HinduMuslim harmony, and sheds light on the life and times of Shibli. Before Independence, it received grants from Nizam of Hyderabad, Nawab of Bhopal, and others. But now that those streams have dried up, many say the cash-starved institution should look beyond its four walls. “If former spiritual leader of the Bohras, Syedna Taher Saifuddin, was once its life member, why cannot the current Syed Mufaddal Saifuddin be requested to associate himself with it? Many institutions like AMU, Jamia Millia and Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu (Hind), Delhi have benefited from Syedna’s association,” says Asif Farooqui, Azamgarh-born, Mumbai-based businessman and chancellor’s nominee at the courts of AMU and Jamia Millia. “The Academy should look outside India, too, for resources,” he adds.
Shibli had donated his own land with a mango orchard and persuaded close relatives to donate parcels of their land for Darul Musannefin, the library, printing press and publication of Maarif, the monthly journal founded in July 1916. Today, it would help if more people became the Academy’s life members by paying Rs 10,000 each, as a corpus of Rs 10 crore can bail out the institution and help implement its development plans.
