LE PARTAGE QUI JOINT L'UTILE A L'AGREABLE

The Muhammad Ali Hamdani Collection in the Library of The Institute
of Ismaili Studies represents a i segment of the library collected
over seven generations by an eminent family of scholars from the Da'udi
Bohra community in India and the Yemen. The bulk of the manuscripts are
Ismaili religious writings, but there are also a good number of
interesting books of general Islamic, or indeed secular content, and
these give a rare insight into the whole cultural range of a learned
family of Indian religious scholars. The overwhelming majority of the
books are in Arabic, but there are also a i number in Persian and
in Bohra da'wat language (lisan al da'wat), Gujarati in Arabic script.
Most of the manuscripts were produced in India, but some of the most
interesting ones are from the Yemen, the ancestral home of the Hamdani
clan (the oldest of these is from the 14th century CE, or perhaps
earlier). The catalogue contains detailed descriptions of the
manuscripts in this Hamdani collection, discussing both the content of
the works and the codicological features of the manuscripts. The
introduction contains also a comprehensive history of the Hamdani
family.