Immortalising the Indo-Iranian history Premium

TSARI enters into an MoU with the Noor Microfilm International Centre to preserve and mend the nearly 43 million documents of historical significance dating back to 1406 CE

History, Thomas Carlyle famously said, is our chief inheritance. And, at the Telangana State Archives and Research Centre (TSARI), albeit a tad late, efforts are underway to digitise and preserve lakhs of folios dating back to the medieval and modern periods of this very history.

After several months of deliberations with the Higher Education Department and even correspondence with the Centre, the TSARI entered into a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Noor Microfilm International Centre (NMIC), a Delhi-based Islamic Republic of Iran-backed institute renowned for its repertoire and expertise in preserving and mending documents of immense historical significance.

The TSARI is a repository of records which date back to 1406 CE. It houses around 43 million documents, a vast majority of which are in Persian.

“Persian is the language of Iran and was widely used in India,” says Ali Akbar Niroomand, Regional Director, NMIC, as he names dynasties where Persian was the official language. “This is our effort to preserve documents that are in Persian. It is the common culture and heritage of both the countries.”

Since last September, when the MoU was signed, the NMIC has preserved and digitised a staggering 4 lakh documents. And given that many documents at the TSARI fell prey to the vagaries of the weather or termites or were ignored by the institution for a frequent want of funds, about 80,000 have been repaired.

Around 670 manuscripts in Persian, Arabic and Urdu also have been digitised. These deal with the history of the Deccan, ‘how fiqh’ (Islamic jurisprudence) was applied in India, and on ‘tasawwuf’ – Islamic spirituality and mysticism.