Hakeem Noor-ud-Deen – Khalifatul Masih I – The Way of the Righteous — Page 184
Hadhrat Khalifatul Masih - The Man 185 Holy Land to perform Hajj , his quest for deeper learning of Hadith and the Fiqah made him stay for more than a year. The tale of his quest for learning and knowledge is long. In pursuit of his learning, he would not hesitate to go and seek any teacher or any scholar. This enabled him to build up a remarkable and resourceful library. His library often had rare manuscripts. In cases where books were not available, he would arrange to have them copied. Hadhrat Khalifatul Masih I ra spent a considerable sum of money in getting copies of the rare books from the libraries of Bhopal and Egypt. It is stated in Hayaat-i-Noor (p. 243) that the value of his library was in excess of hundreds of thousand of rupees (and that was at the end of 19th century). The library had about thirty thousand books. Some top Indian Muslim scholars of standing like Sir Syed Ahmad, Maulana Shibli No ‘ amani and Maulana Abul Kalaam Azad, had at one time or another borrowed books from his library ( Al-Hakam , March 13, 1900). Once a Turkish tourist came to Qadian and he was amazed to see such a big personal library. Writing in a book, Tabarrukaat-i-Azad (some pieces of blessings of Azad), Maulana Abul Kalaam Azad revealed that there were in India two copies of a rare book, one was with Hakeem Noor- ud-Deen and the other with Syed Ali Balgraami. Hadhrat Khalifatul Masih I ra had spent every moment of his life either in acquisition of knowledge or of rare books. Once writing a letter to Syed Muhammad Suleman Chishti Qadri, he reflected his true passion: “ Sir, this humbleself is immensely interested in one particular book of Shah Waliullah Dehlvi. I have been able to collect some parts of it from various sources, including some from Syed Muhammad Hussain, Prime Minister of Patiala, Maulavi Abdul Aziz of Ludhiana, Syed Ahmad Wali of Delhi, and I still have not been able to complete the whole book. Syed Noorul Hassan Khan in a letter informed me that Hadhrat Maulana Shah Suleman Phulwari had the complete book and, therefore, through this humble petition I request you to help me in completing this book. If there is someone in Hudhoor's