The Archaeological Survey of India’s decision to digitise Arabic and Persian estampages under the Bharat SHRI project is more than an archival exercise. It could change how scholars and residents access evidence embedded in Hyderabad’s historic buildings, where inscriptions often survive in public view but remain inaccessible to people who cannot read the languages in which they were written.
The records being digitised are preserved at the Directorate of Epigraphy in Nagpur. The Archaeological Survey of India plans to upload the digitised estampages, transcripts and metadata online for scholars and the public. The move brings a dispersed and specialist collection into a searchable public space, linking the preservation of physical records with wider questions about how cities communicate their past.
Among the records is an Arabic and Persian inscription from the Muhyiuddin Mosque on the Puranapul-Karwan road near Hara Darwaza in Hyderabad. The inscription records the construction of the mosque by Haji Hussain, described as a court noble of the Qutb Shahi Sultanate, during the reign of Abdullah Qutb Shah. It dates the construction to 1045 AH, corresponding to 1635 CE.
The inscription was written in the Naskh script and composed by Mir Ali, son of Mir Jan Mashhadi. The record was copied in 1952. Its journey—from a historic structure in Hyderabad, to a paper-based archival copy, and now towards a digital public record—shows how knowledge about the built environment is preserved through multiple institutional stages.
That chain matters because an inscription is not simply a text attached to a monument. It can provide information about the date of construction, the patron, the political authority of the period, the language used by an institution and the people involved in producing the record. In the case of the Muhyiuddin Mosque, the inscription connects the building to the Qutb Shahi period and identifies individuals associated with its construction and composition.
The ASI’s epigraphy director, Dr K. Muniratnam Reddy, told Deccan Chronicle that around 2,000 new inscriptions have been received in recent years. There are nearly 12,000 Persian and Arabic inscriptions across the country, according to the official. Around 1,000 inscriptions from Telangana and Andhra Pradesh are in the collection, including records connected to the Asaf Jahis, Qutb Shahis, Bahmanis, Adil Shahis and Mughals.
These numbers indicate the scale of the task. The project is not limited to one mosque or one city. It covers a large national corpus, while also bringing particular attention to a region where multiple dynasties, languages and architectural traditions have left physical traces. The Telangana and Andhra Pradesh material forms a substantial regional component of the collection described by the ASI.
The reference to inscriptions associated with several ruling houses is significant for urban history because Hyderabad’s built heritage is not organised around a single period. Buildings, religious structures and public spaces often carry layers of political and cultural history. Making the records available together can help researchers examine these layers across time rather than treating each monument as an isolated object.
The ASI has already made 23,000 inscriptions available, according to the report. The digitisation of Arabic and Persian estampages therefore forms part of a larger effort to place epigraphic material online. The records are expected to include not only images of the estampages but also transcripts and metadata, giving users more than a visual archive.
For scholars, the combination of image, transcript and metadata can make a record easier to identify and compare. For the wider public, it can reduce the dependence on specialists to interpret inscriptions that are visible in the city but difficult to understand. The distinction is important: physical access to a monument does not necessarily mean informational access to its history.
Hyderabad’s historic structures are part of everyday urban life. The Muhyiuddin Mosque, for example, is located along a road linking Puranapul and Karwan, rather than existing only as a remote archaeological site. Residents, commuters and visitors may pass historic structures without being able to read the inscriptions on them. When the language of an inscription is no longer widely understood, the building’s public presence can survive while part of its meaning becomes effectively private knowledge.
History enthusiasts quoted in the report said that people often have to approach experts to understand such inscriptions because Persian is not widely known today. Their observation points to an access problem that is both linguistic and institutional. The issue is not only whether the original inscription remains physically intact, but also whether its information can be interpreted and shared with the communities living around the structure.
Digitisation cannot by itself resolve every problem associated with heritage access. An online record does not replace the monument, the material surface of the inscription or the need for conservation. It also does not automatically guarantee that every user will be able to interpret a transcript or understand the historical context. However, the ASI’s plan creates a public reference layer that can support further interpretation, research and education.
The inclusion of metadata is especially relevant to this process. A digital image without information about its location, date, script, provenance or relationship to a particular structure can remain difficult to use. Metadata can connect an inscription to the building and historical period to which it belongs. In the supplied material, the details of the Muhyiuddin Mosque inscription—its location, date, script, patron and composer—illustrate the kind of information that makes an epigraphic record meaningful beyond simple image preservation.
The project also raises a question about the institutional geography of heritage records. The inscription is associated with Hyderabad, but the estampage is preserved in Nagpur. Such arrangements are part of the way specialist archives operate, yet they can place local historical knowledge at a distance from the communities and cities where the original structures stand. Online publication offers one way to reconnect those records with their places of origin.
That reconnection has an urban dimension. Heritage is often discussed through monuments, restoration projects and tourism, but a city’s historical identity is also carried by smaller pieces of evidence: inscriptions, plaques, archival copies and records held by specialist departments. These materials help establish what is known about buildings and how different periods of urban development are remembered.
The ASI’s figures suggest that the country’s epigraphic archive is large and still expanding. Around 2,000 new inscriptions have reportedly been received in recent years, while nearly 12,000 Arabic and Persian inscriptions are held across the country. The figures also show that digitisation is likely to be a continuing administrative process rather than a one-time publication event. New records must be received, catalogued, copied or scanned, transcribed and linked to usable metadata.
The records associated with Telangana and Andhra Pradesh add another layer to this work. The collection includes inscriptions connected to the Asaf Jahis, Qutb Shahis, Bahmanis, Adil Shahis and Mughals, as well as inscriptions related to a mosque built by Aurangzeb. Taken together, these references describe a historical landscape shaped by successive political authorities and architectural projects. They also show why a regional archive cannot be understood through one dynasty or one language alone.
For governance, the challenge is to ensure that digitisation remains tied to the physical heritage it documents. The online record can help people locate, recognise and study an inscription, but the condition and accessibility of the original structure remain separate concerns. The supplied report does not establish the conservation status of the Muhyiuddin Mosque inscription or describe any programme for improving public interpretation at the site. Those questions remain outside the information currently available.
What the ASI has announced is a significant expansion of access to a specialised historical resource. The project places Arabic and Persian estampages, transcripts and metadata within reach of users who may never visit the Directorate of Epigraphy in Nagpur or consult an expert in person. It also gives Hyderabad’s historic structures a stronger documentary presence in the digital public realm.
The larger urban question is whether digitisation can help cities treat heritage as accessible civic knowledge rather than as information available only to specialists. The answer will depend on how completely the records are uploaded, how clearly they are catalogued and whether the digital material is connected to the buildings, neighbourhoods and communities from which it came. For now, the ASI’s next step is to continue digitising the estampages and upload the associated records online for scholars and the public.
