<小特集 南アジア・イスラーム文献の出版・伝播1>京都大学アキール文庫について

Abstract

The project of Islamic Area Studies, Kyoto University has been promoting the preservation of the intellectual heritage of Islamic culture and the compilation of a database of this heritage. In this regard, Kyoto University decided to house the huge collection of books on Islamic culture in South Asia collected by Dr. Mu‘inuddin Aqeel in 2012, which contains almost 27, 000 items, including both rare books and magazines. This paper overviews the characteristics of the Aqeel Collection with a introduction to Dr. Aqeel who has had a deep attachment to the Japanese academic community. There are many private libraries in South Asia but most of them specialize in a particular subject such as Islamic studies, Urdu literature, art, and so on. The most distinguished characteristic of the Aqeel Collection is that since Dr. Aqeel has wide-ranging interests concerning Islamic culture in South Asia, his collection includes many books on different subjects such as tazkiras, books on religions, history, or literature. Because he tried to collect as many books on one particular subject as he could, his collection includes rare tazkiras of many Sufis of different cities of the Indo-Subcontinent and the regional history of many cities, even small towns of the sub-continent. Besides, Dr. Aqeel adopted his own method of classification for the books. For example, for books on history, Dr. Aqeel classified books according to regions and historical events, such as Pre-Mughal period, Mughal period, Sikh era, British era, Independent movement, and after the independence of India and Pakistan. He even put some literary magazines on a particular subject on the same shelf as the books on the same subject. This method of classification has provided scholars with easy to access all the literature on a particular subject. Thus, the study of these books must inevitably provide multidimensional perspectives about Islam in South Asia.