Wadham College is fortunate to have a special collection of over 4,500 printed books on Persian history, literature, philosophy, theology, science, and art in the Persian Studies Section of its library. There is also an important collection of Arabic and Persian manuscripts, known as the Minasian Collection, and we are very grateful to Durjoy Rahman and the Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation (DBF) for their generosity in helping us to preserve some of these unique works.
Edmund Herzig, Masoumeh and Fereydoon Soudavar Professor of Persian Studies, and Fellow of Wadham College and Librarian, Tim Kirtley, were delighted to welcome Mr Rahman, Founder of DBF, to Wadham to mark the beginning of a significant conservation project that will allow a part of the collection to be restored.
The Minasian Collection was donated to Wadham in 1972 by Dr Caro Minasian (1897 – 1973), an Armenian physician, collector and scholar, before our current College library was founded in 1976. The Arabic and Persian manuscripts comprise 959 titles bound in 770 volumes. Among the rare titles in the collection, some of which were given to Dr Minasian by his patients in return for medical services, are eighteen Qur’ans which range in date from the 17th to the 19th century. The Qur’ans have been selected as a conservation priority following an assessment in 2022 by Victoria Stevens ACR, Library and Archive Conservation and Preservation Ltd.
Fifty years after the original benefaction, this essential conservation and accessing work is needed to ensure that the Qur’ans will continue to be accessible and available for scholars. The conservation work is being led by Katerina Powell ACR, assisted by Victoria Stevens ACR, with support from Kristina Rose-Beers, Head of Conservation and Heritage at Cambridge University Libraries.
Wadham has been the proud custodian of the Minasian Collection in the initial phase of its archival history but thanks to Durjoy Rahman’s support, we are now able to prepare for the move of the Qur’ans to the Bodleian Library, where there are advanced facilities for indexing such works and housing them in optimal conditions.
Following their transfer to the Bodleian Library, the works will be indexed and branded as a Wadham collection. They will be stored in the conditions that are needed to preserve them.
At the Bodleian, the works will be more easily available to scholars from across the world. In the Bodleian’s reading room, scholars will be able, for the first time, to view Wadham’s Qur’an manuscripts alongside manuscripts from the Bodleian’s own collections and there will also be a much larger collection of supporting reference material available. Scholars will be able to order, examine, and compare manuscripts.
Professor Herzig explains: “Wadham’s Minasian collection of Persian manuscripts is a unique source for the social history of reading in the last years of the millennium-long Persian manuscript tradition. We are deeply grateful to the Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation for the vital support towards the preservation of this important collection.”
Mr Durjoy Rahman comments: “The initiative undertaken by Durjoy Bangladesh Foundation (DBF) at Wadham College, Oxford, goes beyond merely restoring some old religious manuscripts stored in a prestigious UK university library. It aims to inspire the wider community, regardless of their religion or beliefs, to protect all cultural heritages. We share a collective responsibility towards future generations to preserve important cultural objects that our ancestors painstakingly collected and voluntarily donated to public spaces. They believed that the future world should have the opportunity to see these artifacts, enriching their educational and historical knowledge.
One crucial aspect of DBF’s initiative is addressing the issue of many historically significant objects being lost due to a lack of proper care. This exemplary effort by DBF aims to rekindle interest among people to actively participate in restoration efforts, ensuring that these valuable artifacts are not lost or destroyed but instead preserved in their physical form for generations to come.”
We hope to be able to continue this essential work to ultimately conserve and store in a much better way, with all of the advantages that transfer to the Bodleian entails, all of the other manuscripts in the Minasian Collection, and to allow scholars greater access to these unique works.
Get in touch
Wadham College has for decades played a central role in the University of Oxford as one of the principal places of Persian scholarship and culture. We have plans to continue the vital conservation work on the entirety of this collection, documenting a unique moment in Persian history which is rapidly fading from living memory.
We would be delighted to discuss how your contribution can enable this important work to benefit the international community of Persian scholars and the wider public.
Edmund Herzig and Durjoy Rahman in Wadham College Library
Julie Hage, Durjoy Rahman, Tim Kirtley and Edmund Herzig in Wadham College Library
Sources: www.wadham.ox.ac.uk
