By Mohd Ismail Khan, TwoCircles.net,
Hyderabad: Salar Jung museum the historic national museum of India is to open an Islamic art gallery, first of its kind in the nation. Work is on progress in the second floor at the eastern block of the museum. The 26,000 sq ft gallery is to cost around four crore rupees to the museum authorities. Thus it is planned to move all the Islamic art and literature into one roof.
Salar Jung museum has plans to display more than 2,500 articles of Islamic art including textiles, Persian carpets, manuscripts, holy Quran, jade and porcelain glass objects containing Quranic inscriptions. This includes 2,600 Arabic, 4800 Persian, 1000 Urdu and 25 Turkish manuscripts collection and nearly 1400 lose panels of calligraphy.
The museum library has rich collections of the holy Quran as it has 365 copies of holy Quran in kufi, Naskh, Nataliq, Raihan, and Thulth script which are decorated in ‘Rehals’ and Zafar Takia. The museum has oldest version of Quran in Kufi script belonging to the ninth century, representing a rare calligraphy.
The minuscule Quran measuring 2cm/3cm printed in 31 folios in this museum is one among the only two copies in the world with the other copy preserved in Iran. There are 200 rosaries of Egyptian and Syrian collection and there are archer rings of the Mughal kings, sword of Aurangzeb, Jade crafted daggers of Emperor Jahangir, Noor Jahan and Shah Jahan.
A wardrobe of the turbans and chair of Tippu Sultan, age old furnitures and paintings from Egypt and The Quran written with Gold and Silver strips from the Mughal period. Thus the Islamic art contains the major portion of the museum and so it was decided to put them all in one place.
At present the Islamic art is being kept shuffled with the Indian art, the middle-eastern art, and far eastern art. The Salar Jung museum was formed in the name of Nawab Mir Yousuf Ali Khan Salar Jung III (1889–1949), former Prime Minister of the seventh Nizam of Hyderabad. He spent a substantial amount of his income and life over thirty five years to gather this valuable collection. The Indian Parliament has earlier declared the museum as an Institution of National Importance.