Dr. Sayed Afzal Peerzada Research Centre: A Home for Rare Books and Research

Every scholarly community eventually needs a room where its rarest work is kept, read and extended. In the Al-Hashmi Educational Welfare & Charitable Trust (R), that room is the Dr. Sayed Afzal Peerzada Research Centre in Bijapur. It holds rare books in Arabic, Urdu and English — precious assets gathered for researchers and knowledge seekers — and it carries out publications and digitization so that what the centre preserves can also be studied and shared. For anyone looking for an islamic research centre that joins preservation to living scholarship, this institution stands beside the Al Wajih Islamic Library, the madrasah tracks and the schools of a network that has served Vijayapur and Dharwad since 1995.

What an Islamic Research Centre Is For

A library hands you books; a research centre asks what you will do with them. That distinction explains the purpose of the Dr. Sayed Afzal Peerzada Research Centre. Its first task is custodial — acquiring, holding and caring for rare books that ordinary marketplaces no longer supply. Its second task is scholarly: giving students, authors and independent researchers the environment, the reference material and the institutional backing to produce work of their own. Its third task is dissemination, through publications and digitization, so that knowledge developed inside the centre reaches the wider ummah rather than remaining a private achievement.

This threefold purpose fits the Al-Hashmi model precisely. The Trust has always treated knowledge as a trust rather than a commodity: its schools teach Deeniyat alongside modern subjects, its madrasah departments run from Nazira through Fazeelat, and its welfare programmes — annual blood donation camps of more than 1,000 units, more than 500 free cataract surgeries over the years, EWS scholarships for over 200 students a year — treat service as the natural companion of learning. A research centre is where that ethic becomes intellectual: preserving what the community knows, and funding the next generation to know more.

Rare Books in Arabic, Urdu and English

The centre’s holdings are defined by three languages, and each carries a different part of the community’s memory. Arabic is the language of the Holy Quran, the Hadith and the classical sciences — the texts studied in the Trust’s Aalimiyat and Fazeelat departments, where students work through Fiqh, Usool-e-Fiqh, Tafseer, Hadith and Aqaid. Rare Arabic titles matter because editions differ, older printings sometimes preserve readings or notes that later ones drop, and a serious student of the tradition frequently needs the earlier imprint, not merely any imprint. Urdu, the mother tongue of the community and the teaching language of much of the Dars-e-Nizami tradition, carries its own vast literary and religious inheritance, including the devotional and legal literature that household scholarship has leaned on for generations. English, finally, opens the door to modern scholarship — historiography, Orientalist studies, contemporary writing — which the serious researcher must know in order to answer or engage it.

Books in all three languages gathered in one place give a researcher something rare: comparison without travel. A verse discussed in an Arabic commentary can be checked against an Urdu rendering and an English study in the same afternoon. A student can trace how a ruling was taught in one century and explained in another. For authors preparing books of their own — whether on Fiqh, Seerat, community history or education — such concentration of material shortens the search and raises the standard of the finished work.

Where Preservation Becomes Scholarship

The centre’s greatest contribution may be the bridge it builds between two kinds of people: those who keep knowledge and those who use it. A rare book that sits untouched is preserved in one sense and lost in another; it becomes scholarship only when a reader opens it with a question. That is why the centre’s environment matters to the students of the network. A hafiz engaged in the weekly Daur revision circles, an Aalim candidate deepening his Fiqh, a teacher preparing a Deeniyat lesson assessed out of 100 marks, or a PU-college student writing an academic project can each find material here that moves them from syllabus to original sources. The centre turns the campus into a place where the frontier of a student’s reading is a rare book rather than a photocopy.

The same bridge serves the wider academic community. Independent scholars in Bijapur, visiting researchers from universities, and authors who may never have studied in a madrasah all benefit from an institution that takes both devotion and method seriously. The centre does not demand that its users belong to one profession or one path; it demands only that they come with a real question and the discipline to work. In a region whose Islamic scholarly history deserves far more documentation than it has received, that openness is itself a form of service — and it is fully in keeping with the Trust’s motto, ‘Love for ALL, Hate None’.

Publications and Digitization: Sharing What the Centre Holds

Gathering rare books is the beginning; making them useful is the continuing work, and the Dr. Sayed Afzal Peerzada Research Centre addresses this through publications and digitization. Publications give the scholars and advanced students of the network a route to put their work before the public — the natural next step after years of study in the Trust’s departments, where Seerat, Fiqh, Aqaid and Tafseer are not abstract subjects but daily disciplines. Digitization addresses a different problem: distance and fragility. Pages grow brittle, print runs disappear, and researchers who cannot travel to Bijapur are effectively excluded from what the centre holds. Digital capture keeps originals safer on their shelves while extending their reach to every reader who can be given access.

Both strands also protect the community’s intellectual patrimony against quieter dangers — the out-of-print title that vanishes from every catalogue, the manuscript noted in an old bibliography but unseen for decades, the Urdu work whose only surviving copies sit in private homes. Methodical cataloguing, scanning and publication ensure that what has been gathered is not merely stored but accounted for. For donors and well-wishers, this is some of the most durable support a community trust can receive: money spent on preservation and publication continues to serve readers long after the cheque has been forgotten.

How Researchers and Knowledge Seekers Can Engage

Engagement begins simply. Students of the Al-Hashmi network can ask their teachers about using the centre’s resources for assignments, projects and advanced reading; independent scholars and authors can approach the institution through the Trust with a clear description of their research and the material they seek. Because the centre works alongside the Al Wajih Islamic Library — with its massive collection of books of knowledge and fine arts and its manuscript holdings — a query that begins in one institution may well be answered in the other, and the combined resources of the campus stand behind every serious inquiry.

There is also room for the community to give. Zakat and Sadaqah already sustain the Trust’s welfare work, from scholarships to medical camps, and the same spirit of giving can underwrite the quieter needs of scholarship: acquiring a rare title before it is lost, conserving a fragile binding, cataloguing a backlog of manuscripts, or digitizing a shelf that no reader can reach. Those who wish to contribute their expertise — cataloguing, translation, digital imaging, or simply careful proofreading — will find that intellectual khidmat is as welcome as any other. Knowledge, in this tradition, is kept alive by many hands, and the centre is always looking for a few more.

Conclusion: A Home Your Questions Can Rely On

The Dr. Sayed Afzal Peerzada Research Centre exists so that rare books in Arabic, Urdu and English remain working instruments of the community’s scholarship — preserved carefully, opened generously, published wisely and carried forward through digitization. If you are a student, author or researcher, or a supporter who wants preservation work to outlive us all, we invite you to connect. Explore the centre within the wider network at https://www.alhashmi.org/institutions/, read more about the Trust’s heritage at https://www.alhashmi.org/about/, or begin at https://www.alhashmi.org/.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Dr. Sayed Afzal Peerzada Research Centre?

It is the research institution of the Al-Hashmi Educational Welfare & Charitable Trust in Bijapur. It holds rare books in Arabic, Urdu and English as precious assets for researchers and knowledge seekers, and it carries out publications and digitization work.

Who can use the research centre?

Researchers, authors, students and knowledge seekers are all welcome to engage with the centre. Students of the network’s madrasahs, schools and colleges can draw on its resources for advanced study, while independent scholars may approach the Trust with a clear description of their research needs.

Which languages are represented in the collection?

The centre’s rare books are held in Arabic, Urdu and English — covering the classical religious sciences, the community’s Urdu literary and devotional heritage, and modern scholarly writing in English, so that researchers can compare sources across traditions.

How does digitization help researchers?

Digitization creates durable copies of fragile or scarce material, protecting originals from handling while allowing scholars who cannot visit Bijapur to work from the same resources. It also safeguards against the loss of out-of-print works whose last copies may otherwise disappear.