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Shelfmark: MS Or 148

The East India Company

(1600-1858)

In 1805 the Court of Directors of the East India Company presented the University with a very elegant manuscript Quran, probably copied during the 10th century AH (the 17th century AD).
The volume was selected from the library of Tippu Sahib (1749-1799), Sultan of Mysore, who died during the storming of Seringapatam in May 1799, and is probably one of those included in "A descriptive catalogue of the Oriental library of the late Tippoo Sultan of Mysore", by Charles Stewart (Cambridge: 1809) (EUL *M.18.4).

Nearly twenty years later, in 1824, the Company was instrumental in presenting to the Library, as a gift from the King of Oudh, a copy of the latter's Persian dictionary and grammar "The seven seas" (Lucknow, 1822).