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The
National Galleries of Scotland
Bibliomania:
Tipu used to put his signature and stamp on every book he read. Most of the books in his library bore his signature and stamp. He used to put his signatures in an artistic and intricate style. First, he used Tipu Sultan as his name ‘Nabi Malik’. According to Kirk Patrick, the British supervisor of the library appointed by the Company, his wittings were superior to others and exceptionally lucid and compact. more...
A Guide to Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Urdu Manuscript Libraries in India, by Omar Khalidi
The library of Tipu Sultan, (1753–99), the ruler of Mysore met a fate similar to that of the Adil Shahi library. See Charles Stewart, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Oriental Library of the late Tipoo, Sultan of Mysore (Cambridge, 1809); Hidayat Hosain, "The Library of Tipu Sultan," Islamic Culture 15 (1940): 139–167; and S. C. Sutton, Guide to the India Office Library, (London: India Office Library, 1967). However, some portions of Tipu’s library was moved to Calcutta’s Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1808, see the Asiatic Society’s website: http://www.indev.nic.in/asiatic/Library/index.htm
The well-known biographer of Tipu Sultan, Mahmud Khan Bangalori,
d. 1958, wrote a book in Urdu entitled Tipu Sultan maa fihrist-i
kutub khanah-yi Tipu Sultan (Lahore: Gosha-yi Adab, 1959). more
Oriental & India Office Collections (OIOC) section of the British Library in London
The nucleus of the collection itself was from the private Library of Tipu Sultan of Mysore, who had built it from the treasures of various Indian rulers conquered by himself and his father Hyder Ali.
After the British defeated Tipu Sultan, this library of 2000 manuscripts was divided between the Cambridge and Oxford Universities in Britain and the College of Fort William in Calcutta. Meanwhile Robert Orme, the historiographer of the East India Company had collected a large number of manuscripts, books and letters during his career and requested the East India Company to create ‘a repository for Oriental Writings.’ more...
In contrast to the old British Museum Library, more than half of the India Office Library's collection comes from a single source. These are the 1,950 Arabic manuscripts from the so-called 'Delhi collection', representing what remained in the imperial Library of the Mughal dynasty at Delhi in 1858. Other important collections in the India Office Library include 438 manuscripts from the Bijapur collection, the remnant of the Adil Shahi rulers; 94 manuscripts from the Library of Tipu Sultan; 141 manuscripts purchased from the nabob Richard Johnson in 1807; and 72 manuscripts bought from Warren Hastings, the first Governor-General of India, in 1809. more
For all those interested in the history of Urdu literature, the very name of Fort William College arouses in them the feeling of anguish over the fact that the Fort William College was founded in 1800 to commemorate the "joy of triumph" over Tipu Sultan. more
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09/10/2005