In the heart of the Lahore Fort once stood a room that shimmered with more than gold and silver—it glowed with the light of knowledge. This was the Toshakhana, the royal treasury of the Lahore Darbar under Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Within its guarded walls lay not only jewels, arms, and regalia, but also the manuscripts, maps, and books that reflected the intellectual horizons of a confident Punjabi empire.
When the East India Company annexed Punjab in 1849, this treasury became the first casualty of empire. What had been a repository of sovereignty was transformed into a bureaucratic depot of curiosity, its treasures catalogued, classified, and scattered across imperial institutions. Among these manuscripts was a Persian cosmography titled Tarjumah-i ‘Ajā’ib al-Makhlūqāt — The Translation of the Wonders of Creation — now preserved in the British Library under the reference “Or. 1621.”
To understand the manuscript’s importance, one must first understand the statesmanship of Maharaja Ranjit Singh. Known as the ‘Lion of the Punjab,’ he ruled not only through the sword but through symbolism and stewardship of culture. His court at Lahore was a living mosaic of traditions—Persian scribes, Kashmiri painters, Punjabi poets, Hindu accountants, and European officers all served under his watch.
Ranjit Singh’s Toshakhana was more than a royal storeroom; it was an archive of identity. The Maharaja understood that power was not sustained by military strength alone but also by the preservation of knowledge. He valued books and manuscripts as emblems of legitimacy, continuity, and refinement.
In Ranjit Singh’s understanding, the ruler who guards knowledge guards the cosmos itself. His sovereignty, therefore, was not only territorial but intellectual
By acquiring rare works such as ‘Ajā’ib al-Makhlūqāt, he placed his rule within the larger cosmopolitan lineage of Indo-Persian kingship, echoing Mughal and Deccan traditions where rulers were also patrons of learning. The presence of scientific instruments, maps, illustrated Qur’ans, and cosmographies in his Toshakhana symbolised that Lahore was not merely a capital—it was a seat of worldliness and wonder. In Ranjit Singh’s understanding, the ruler who guards knowledge guards the cosmos itself. His sovereignty, therefore, was not only territorial but intellectual. This delicate balance between power and knowledge was shattered after the British conquest of Punjab. In March 1849, the East India Company marched into Lahore, and the city’s treasures were formally confiscated. Dr John Login, a Scottish physician and administrator, was appointed both as in-charge of Lahore Fort and guardian of the young Maharaja Duleep Singh—the last heir of the Sikh Empire.
Login’s task was not simply caretaking; it was cataloguing. Under his supervision, officers of the Board of Administration began preparing detailed inventories of the Toshakhana. Jewels, coins, and arms were counted with precision. Manuscripts and books were listed but often undervalued, treated as secondary to material wealth. To the colonial eye, these manuscripts were ‘objects of curiosity,’ not living expressions of sovereignty. Thus began the transformation of the royal archive into an imperial record.
Among the manuscripts recorded during this process was Tarjumah-i ‘Ajā’ib al-Makhlūqāt. Originally written by Zakariya al-Qazwini in the 13th century, this work of cosmography described the structure of the universe—from celestial spheres to earthly creatures. In South Asia, Persian translations such as the one found in Lahore became immensely popular. They blended Islamic cosmology with local imagination, serving as vernacular encyclopedias of wonder.
For centuries, such works were copied, illustrated, and read aloud in courts, mosques, and schools. They symbolised a bridge between faith and reason, where astronomy, mythology, and spirituality coexisted. The Lahore manuscript’s early history connects it to Muhammad ‘Adil Shah of Bijapur (r. 1627–1656), whose royal seal marks its pages. How it travelled from the Deccan to Lahore remains a mystery—perhaps as a diplomatic gift, a war trophy, or an antiquarian acquisition. What is clear is that Ranjit Singh recognised its worth and secured it within his Toshakhana, preserving it as part of his cultural empire.
When the British annexed Punjab, they systematically dismantled Ranjit Singh’s archival system. In 1851, a small but revealing notice appeared in Lahore Chronicle, that the collection of books found in the treasury of Lahore, and known by the name of the Durbar Library, have been presented by the Board of Administration, with the consent of the Government of India, to the new College of Amritsar.
Behind this short statement lies a monumental loss. The Durbar Library, once the intellectual nucleus of the Lahore court, was dispersed and gifted to a new colonial institution in Amritsar. Manuscripts that once served as instruments of sovereignty were now teaching tools in a foreign educational framework. The British administrators, in their zeal to “preserve knowledge,” stripped it of its original context. The ‘Ajā’ib al-Makhlūqāt was no longer a royal book of marvels—it was now catalogued as an “Oriental curiosity.”
Dr Login’s position was emblematic of the colonial paradox. He was the man charged with protecting the child of Punjab’s sovereignty was also the one overseeing the auctioning of its heritage. His reports detail how items from the Toshakhana were sold, gifted, or sent to Calcutta and London. Among these, ‘Ajā’ib al-Makhlūqāt was reportedly sold to Sir Henry Miers Elliot, a British historian and administrator, for Rs. 40—a fraction of its true value. Elliot later became famous for compiling The History of India as Told by Its Own Historians, ironically built on the very sources his empire had displaced.
Between the seal of Bijapur and the sale in Lahore lies a two-century silence. No official record explains the manuscript’s journey through empires and libraries. This absence of documentation—this archival silence—is as revealing as the artefacts themselves. These missing records are not accidental; they are symptomatic of how empire managed memory. The British created archives that served governance, not preservation. Their aim was control, not continuity. Thus, while we find exhaustive lists of cannons and jewels, the intellectual treasures of Punjab remain faintly footnoted.
For historians today, this raises deeper questions of provenance and ethics. Who owns the manuscript—the institution that holds it, or the civilisation that produced it? What happens when a work meant to inspire wonder becomes an artefact of empire?
At its core, ‘Ajā’ib al-Makhlūqāt was not just a Persian cosmography; it was a vernacular form of global curiosity. Long before modern science popularised astronomy, Qazwini’s work taught readers to see the cosmos as interconnected—a chain of creation stretching from angels to animals. In the Lahore Darbar, such manuscripts represented South Asia’s participation in the global history of knowledge. They linked Punjab to Baghdad, Isfahan, Delhi, and Samarqand—worlds united by scholarship rather than conquest. Ranjit Singh, by preserving and displaying such manuscripts, asserted that knowledge itself was a symbol of rule. His sovereignty, like his empire, was rooted in pluralism—an awareness that strength lies not only in the sword, but in the pen, the book, and the archive.
Today, the British Library’s digitisation of ‘Ajā’ib al-Makhlūqāt through the Qatar Digital Library has made it accessible to global audiences once again. Yet, digital access cannot erase the questions of loss, movement, and ownership that surround it. The task before South Asian scholars and archivists is not merely to recover manuscripts but to reclaim their meanings—to reinsert them into the cultural and linguistic worlds that gave them life. The Lahore Toshakhana, once a treasury of kings, now challenges us to become treasurers of truth.
The journey of ‘Ajā’ib al-Makhlūqāt—from Bijapur to Lahore to London—is more than a tale of displacement. It is a mirror held up to our history, reflecting how knowledge travels, how power rewrites, and how memory survives.