Mar'ashi Najafi library

The Ayatollah Marashi Najafi Library, in Qom, is the third largest library in Iran, after the Central Library of Astan Quds Razavi, and the Library of Parliament, as well as being the world's third largest Islamic library, with more than 250,000 books, 25,000 of them online.[1]

Founder

The library began as the personal library of the founder, Ayatollah Marashi Najafi, a prominent Islamic scholar known for his dedication to religious scholarship and education throughout his life, and who began collecting rare texts as a student, partly to keep them from being possessed by the British colonial authorities. Marashi Najafi died shortly after laying the foundation stone of a new library building in 1989.[1][2]

His will states:

Bury me at the entrance of the library so that the feet of the researchers of Islamic sciences step beside my grave.[3]

History and management

Since Najafi's death, ownership and management of the library has since passed to his son, Mahmoud Marashi, who was instructed by his father's will.[4]

The library was founded in 1963, with further expansion in 1974 and 1988. It is situated one hundred yards from the Fatima Masumeh Shrine in Qom, where Marashi Najafi was a cleric, as well as being near his own tomb. The cost of the library was at first met by its founder's personal money as well as his descendants'; but, beginning in 1997, the library began to be funded as a governmental institution and given a portion of the government's budget, under Resolution 205 of the Supreme Council of Cultural Revolution, its operation overseen by Marashi Najafi's family, in cooperation with the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance.

Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini made the remark that "the library of Ayatollah Marashi Najafi is an unparalleled library and perhaps unrivaled in Iran".[5] The library contains books in at least 30 different languages, including Turkish, Urdu, and Arabic.[6] The possession, maintenance, and showcasing of Hebrew books once surprised some American and British rabbis, who were guests of the Iranian government, and who had allotted 3 hours of time to visit Qom. One rabbi said that he imagined that, Qom being the center of the revolution, Hebrew books would be burned and the ashes scattered into the wind, but saw that, instead, such works were given the same respect as Muslim books, and that Jewish prophets were well-regarded. So charmed were the rabbis that they devoted the entire 3 hours of their Qom stay to visiting the library.[7]

Holdings

Departments

Gallery

Sources

  1. 1 2 "The Library of Ayatollah Marashi Najafi" (PDF). Iran’s Manuscript Libraries. The Parliament's Library. 1: 96–100. August–September 2013. Retrieved 2 January 2015.
  2. "Ayatollah Sayyid Shihab al-Din Marashi-Najafi". Oxford University Press. 2014. Retrieved 25 December 2014.
  3. "Ayatullah al-Uzma Marashi Najafi (R.A.) & his Library". Islamic Laws. Retrieved 25 December 2014.
  4. "An extract from the will of Ayatullah Syed Shahabuddin al-Mar'ashi". Islamic Laws. Retrieved 25 December 2014.
  5. "Ayatollah al-Ozma Marashi Najafi" (in Persian). Retrieved 2010-04-05.
  6. "Grand Ayatollah Mar`ashi Najafi Public Library". Tebyan. 19 January 2011. Retrieved 25 December 2014.
  7. مصاحبه / مروری بر فعالیتهای کتابخانه ایت الله مرعشی نجفی [Interview / Review of Ayatollah Marashi Najafi Library Activities] (in Persian). 13. Journal of the Shiite News. December 2006: 2.

External links

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