Exhibition on Specialized Centers of the Islamic Seminaries

Ayatullah Shab Zendeh Dar, Ayatullah Shaheedi and Ayatullah Qaeni along with the Director of the Centre for Contemporary Jurisprudence (Fiqh), Sheikh Ithna 'Asheri, visited all the exhibition booths over a 4 hour visit at Masjid Jamkaran and were acquainted with the latest achievements of the Islamic Seminaries of Qom and Isfahan. Similarly, Sheikh Rustam Nejad, with patience and cordial accompaniment, presented comprehensive details of the activities by the Specialized Centers of the Islamic Seminaries.

The presence of a number of members of the Scientific Council of the Department of Contemporary Jurisprudence (Fiqh) at the exhibition of the scientific achievements of the seminary's specialized educational units quoted facts about the Moglistan Library that you may not know!

One of the booths which was very interesting for all the teachers was the book of the Message Amoozish 'Aali Hawza 'Ilmiyya of Isfahan who through excellent presentation, showed that in this educational center, specialized fields are presented in every field of study for the students of Isfahan and they have also published a collection of works by Ayatullah Mazahiri. The hand-written copy of this collection was also very interesting. As it can be seen in the photograph below hand-written copies from many countries in the world have been collected, scanned and catalogued and will later be available for researchers whereby the extent of their work is rare. I instantly remembered that recently a piece of news had been circulating that a library had been found in Moglistan that contains books which the Moguls, after occupying Baghdad, took back with them to Moglistan and it is probable that new books from Islamic sources have also been found within them (this collection).

I took the opportunity and asked Sheikh Majid Hadi Zadeh who was the head of that booth whether he has any plans for Moglistan? In complete surprise he said that the origin of this news has no reality!! The explanation is that the said library is in Tibet and was used by Buddhist nuns before and lately they removed it's walls and is now available for public visitors. However, simultaneous to this measure, the administration of Iraq announced in a news report that they intend to catalogue a few thousand hand-written copies and the simultaneous publication of both these news reports caused the illusion of the existence of those books in the Tibetan library. The story of Moglistan could have made this news report more interesting and hence for this reason they flew from Tibet to the Mongols.

Authored by Hussain Ithna 'Asheri