On the 16th of October, CBRL’s Archives and Repository Manager Alice Lubbock visited The Institute of Ismaili Studies (IIS), in the Aga Khan Centre in King’s Cross, London. The visit was organised with the help of Dr Alex Henley, a CBRL member since his time studying in Jordan during an Arabic Immersion Course, who had attended CBRL’s 2023 AGM Lecture, Gaza, The Key to Peace in the Middle East by Professor Jean-Pierre Filiu where they made the connection. Alice visited to learn more about The Institute of Ismaili Studies’ extensive archives and special collections, as well as their digitisation and cataloguing methods.

Here Alice tells us about her visit:

The first thing you see when entering the Aga Khan Centre is their impressive main lobby, with a view all the way to the top of the building, and Rhapsody in Four Colours, a 35-metre high sculpture that celebrates the connection between 20th century geometric abstraction and the achievements of Islamic Civilisation, made by Pakistani artist Rasheed Araeen. 

We then took the lift to the 9th floor, to see The Garden of Life, one of the 5 outdoor spaces on various floors of the building. The Garden of Life is an example of the enclosed ‘high gardens’ of the Mughal Empire, with water flowing in channels called chadars through the layout of the rectangular garden. There are inscriptions in Arabic and Islamic script along a thin carved band that run across the walls opening up to a space showing incredible views of the new developments around Coal Drops Yard, and further across London. 

The Institute of Ismaili Studies in London teaches two Graduate programmes – Islamic Studies in Secondary School Teacher Training Programme; and a Graduate Programme in Islamic Studies and Humanities, which Dr Henley leads, and it offers several scholarships and fellowship programmes for contributions to scholarship in Islamic studies. His Highness the Aga Khan established an academic institution promoting scholarship and learning on Islam, and a greater understanding of the intellectual heritage of the Ismailis, around 1975 in Paris, and it was formally inaugurated in London in 1977. It moved to its permanent home at the Aga Khan Centre in 2014. The building, designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Fumihiko Maki, houses the IIS, the Aga Khan University’s Institute for the Study of Muslim Civilisations, the Aga Khan Foundation and the Aga Khan Library which is also where the IIS’s special collections are looked after. 

Dr Henley then took me to the Aga Khan Library’s meeting room where Dr Wafi Momin, Dr Karim Javan, Naureen Ali and Malcolm Pennell, the archivist, were waiting, and we had a discussion about our respective institutes, collections, and digitisation programmes. The Ismaili Special Collections Unit (ISCU), established in 2013, holds nearly 3,000 manuscripts – the largest collection of its kind – in Arabic, Persian, Indic and other languages, as well as coins, glass weights, medals and other historical artefacts, photographs and audio-visual materials, rare and special printed materials (including periodicals and magazines) and archival collections. Naureen Ali, the Cataloguer and System Officer for the ISCU, explained how they have added catalogued information on close to 5,000 items to the ISCU online catalogue so far, which includes more than 700 images. They do this with the help of graduate interns and cataloguers. Their processes have been iterative – with a lot of learning on the job, and tweaking of digitisation methods and equipment as the various types of material would require.  

Through collaboration with other organisations or academic institutions, they can focus on particular, discreet collections to make accessible – for example ARCHNET, an open access platform focused on all Muslim societies’ architecture through the ages up to modern day. This was a partnership between the Aga Khan Documentation Center, MIT Libraries and the Aga Khan Trust for Culture (AKTC), with support from the Aga Khan Program for Islamic Architecture at Harvard and MIT. ISCU has recently worked on a dedicated video series, in collaboration with the Department of Communication and Development (DCD), to explore the historical significance and contemporary relevance of manuscripts and other heritage materials housed at the IIS. Titled, ‘Islamic Heritage Past and Present’, this series consists of short episodes featuring scholars on topics such as the Ismailis in history and myth, bringing specialist research to a wider audience. Thanks to the support of generous donors, the Library is digitising their Ottoman books collection, dating from the late 18th to the early 20th century – and making them available on the Aga Khan Library Digital Collection platform – a collaborative partnership with Bloomsbury Digital Resources. 

I learnt so much during my visit, and I am hoping to continue a dialogue with the IIS and ISCU about how our institutes could collaborate, support each other and share our expertise.