AIITAIIT NEWSNEWSTHE NEWSLETTER OF THE ANCIENT INDIA & IRAN TRUST

(REG. CHARITY NO. 276295)

NO.3: SPRING/SUMMER 2009

CELEBRATING 30 YEARSThis is a challenging and exciting time at the Ancient India and Iran Trust. Since it was founded in 1978 to fill a

perceived gap in British cultural and scholarly life, it has grown into a thriving, well-loved institution and hasgained a firm reputation both in the UK and many parts of the world. This is why, to mark the 30th anniversary ofthe Trust in 2008, we decided to launch an Appeal to raise money for a new resource centre to be built as an extensionto our premises. This will provide better (and more spacious) lecture and conference facilities, increased book storageand a dedicated exhibition space for the Trust’s collections of manuscripts, coins and works of art, which at presentcannot be displayed.

The resource centre has been under discussion for some years now during which the need for it has become morepressing. Our lectures are increasingly well attended and often quite a squeeze; due to space restrictions most of ourconferences have to be by invitation only and our library, with over 25,000 volumes and over 100,000 photographicimages, continues to grow and attract valuable bequests, most recently from Ralph Pinder-Wilson and ProfessorMary Boyce. It is rapidly becoming one of the most distinguished collections in the Western world.

The Appeal was launched in June 2008 at a two-day conference on Zoroastrianism, one of our special 30th-anniversary events (for more about these, see pp. 2-3), and the fund was kick-started with a donation of £25,000 fromthe Zartoshty Brothers, presented by Dorab Mistry from the Zoroastrian Trust Funds of Europe. Our aim is to raise£3.5 million to pay for the new centre and increase the Trust’s endowment to meet future running and staffing costs– even without the new building, we need a full-timeCurator/Librarian (in addition to our part-time AssistantLibrarian) and to increase the Administrator’s hours tofull-time.

Of course, we have a long way to go (and, needlessto say, now is not an ideal time in which to try and raisesuch an amount), but the response so far has beenencouraging. John House, who has been volunteering atthe Trust since 2007 is busy working on applications tovarious grant-making organisations and we hope to putin an application to the Heritage Lottery Fund soon.Except for a grant 12 years ago specifically linked tocataloguing, the Trust has received no public money.Experience has taught us that although it is important tocooperate with other institutions, we should remain independent. We believe that this is the best way we can servescholars and anyone else with an interest in this field.

If you would like to make a donation, however modest, or feel you can in any way assist us with our efforts, pleaseget in touch. A lot of effort has gone into building the Trust from its early days and as we have come so far we canonly hope to go further. With the parts of the world we seek to promote an understanding of increasingly in the news,the importance of our work, and of extending its reach, becomes all the more obvious.

Presenting the cheque. Left-right: Representatives of the ZTFE andAIIT: Rusi Dalal, Paurushasp Jila, Dorab Mistry, Nicholas Barrington,Bridget Allchin, Noshir Avari, and Almut Hintze

APPEAL FUNDDONORS

We would like to thank thefollowing individuals and

organisations for their donations toour Appeal Fund:

Neil Kreitman Foundation Zartoshty Brothers Bestway Foundation Sir Nicholas Barrington Prof. N. & Mrs U. Sims-Williams The Englefield Charitable TrustDr Kenneth KennedyIstituto Italiano per l’Africa eL’Oriente, Rome

Mrs F. Soudavar Farman-Farmaian Dr F.R. and Dr B. AllchinDr M. Petraglia & Dr N. Boivin Dr Almut Hintze T. Richard Blurton Archer Charitable TrustMs Hilary A. Smith Dr Mitra Sharafi Lady Esme Smith

AIITAIIT NNEWSEWS : 30: 30THTH A ANNIVERSARYNNIVERSARY E EVENTSVENTS 2 2

‘ZOROASTRIANS PAST AND PRESENT’7-8 JUNE 2008

JESSE PALSETIA

Organized by the Ancient India and Iran Trust’s Honorary Secretary, DrAlmut Hintze, this two-day conference brought together scholars,

notable Zoroastrian community leaders and members of the Zoroastrian TrustFunds of Europe (ZTFE) and of the World Zoroastrian Organisation (WZO),as well as graduate students from Britain, Europe, North America and India,with an interest in Zoroastrian and Parsi studies. The conference was held tocommemorate the 30th anniversary of the AIIT, a jewel of Cambridge, andtook place in its intimate Victorian quarters at 23 Brooklands Avenue.

The range of talks given at the conference included topics on Zoroastrianism,Iranian philology, and Parsi history. Opening the first of six sessions, DorabMistry, former President of the ZTFE, eloquently noted the illustrious history ofParsis in leadership capacities in various areas of endeavour, and appealed toParsis to strive for greater leadership roles in present-day politics. Professor JohnHinnells noted the accomplishments of Dadabhai Naoroji in Britain between1885 and 1905, and Dinyar Patel gave a detailed account of M.K. Gandhi’scomplicated relationship with the Parsis of India. In session 2, Dastur K.M.JamaspAsa discussed the past and present state of Zoroastrian religious study.His appeal for continued scholarship in Zoroastrian studies was aptly answeredby Professor Maria Macuch, who provided new insights into property and lawin the Pahlavi marriage contract. Professor Mitra Sharafi brought her legal andhistorical understanding to an analysis of the Parsi Chief Matrimonial Court ofBombay from 1893 to 1929, and detailed patterns of use of the courts. In session3, Professor Jesse Palsetia elaborated on the role of the Parsi businessman andphilanthropist Sir Jamsetjee Jejeebhoy in the public culture of nineteenth-century Bombay. Mr Khojeste Mistry delivered a passionate defence of

Zoroastrian identity against theacculturative influences beingadopted in India and the diaspora.Dan Sheffield closed the first day’spresentations with a well-researchedanalysis of the Parsi priest Mulla Firuz.

Day two highlighted research onZoroastrian religious studies andIranian philology. Professor ProdsOktor Skjærvø noted the challengesin translating and understandingconcepts from the ancient Zoroastrianliterature. Bahman Moradian gave aninformative account of the state of theIranian Zoroastrians and the Daxme ofIran and Professor Jean Kellensprovided a new analysis of the Yasnaceremony. Session 5 began with Dr.Yuhan Vevaina’s masterful analysis ofZoroastrian eschatology. Arash Zeinidiscussed ‘Composition Prior toPerformance: Orality and the GathicPoet’ and Leon Goldman elaboratedon the role and function of femalesin religious life discernible fromthe religious literature. ProfessorHelmut Humbach, renowned for histranslation of the Gathas ofZarathustra, provided an analysis ofthe Rabatak inscription, a rock inscrip-tion written in the Bactrian languageand the Greek script, discovered in1993 in Afghanistan, which high-lights the rule of the Kushana kingKanishka and his use of regional, reli-gious and royal symbolism. DrElizabeth Tucker analyzed an Avestanterm of the so-called ZoroastrianConfession of Faith (Yasna 12.9fraspaiiaoxedra), while Dr AlmutHintze provided an analysis of theAvestan ‘ghost’word auuah or ‘water’.

The presentations highlighted thetremendous on-going scholarship andcommitment to Zoroastrianism,Zoroastrian literature, and the historyof the Parsis of India and the diaspora,and the involvement of the Zoroastriancommunity and organizations such asthe AIIT augur well for the future ofZoroastrian academic studies.

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In January 2008 the successful completionof the Bactrian Chronology project, which

had been based at the Trust since 2004, wasmarked by a two-day workshop. This broughtto the Trust a distinguished group of scholarsfrom as far away as the USA and Japan aswell as the Afghan ambassador, H.E. DrMohammad Rahim Sherzoy, and representa-tives of the BBC World Service. Among thepresentations were talks by all three membersof the project team – Nicholas Sims-Williams,François de Blois and Johnny Cheung – onthe results of the project, including dramaticevidence that the starting-point of the eraused to date the Bactrian documents was thefoundation of the Sasanian dynasty of Iran in 223 C.E. As a result of thisdiscovery, it is now possible in many cases to calculate the exact year, eventhe exact day, on which a document was written.

The event also included a reception at which two new books werelaunched: Arabic documents from Early Islamic Khurasan by GeoffreyKhan; and the second volume of Bactrian documents from NorthernAfghanistan by Nicholas Sims-Williams (for which the author has sincereceived a ‘Book of the Year’ prize from the President of Iran).

P.S. The rooms at the AIIT previously occupied by the Bactrian Chronologyproject now house a new project directed by Dr Erica Hunter and entitled ‘TheChristian library from Turfan’. Watch this space for further news!

BACTRIAN CHRONOLOGYWORKSHOP

NICHOLAS SIMS-WILLIAMS

INDIAN ARTSEMINAR

We were very fortunate to have the Bailey Memorial Lecture, ‘Why write on pots?Reflections on Medieval Persian Ceramics’, given by Professor Robert Hillenbrand,

a world authority on Islamic art and architecture, in December 2008. He showed a seriesof photographs of inscribed Persian bowls, the most beautiful of which were decoratedwith a white slip on a terracotta body with slender black Kufic writing painted around therim, such as the 10th century bowl from Nishapur shown here.

There were several answers to the question ‘Why?’. In the strict Islamic tradition theportrayal of living creatures was forbidden and so calligraphy became the preferred deco-ration of art objects. It also had the advantage of delivering a message, which could bededicatory, religious or proverbial. For example, this bowl warns: ‘Planning before work protects you from regret’.

There were one or two difficulties in the process, however. The earliest form of writing in the Arabic script was notonly without vowels but also without the dots that in later Arabic distinguished B from T or TH, or S from SH, andso on. The Persian pottery painter might also have had the further difficulty of not knowing Arabic, with the resultthat the Kufic inscriptions are often indecipherable. In fact, in extreme cases, the painter might not have even botheredwith getting a message across but just concentrated on creating an attractive calligraphic pattern. Interestingly, this is stillin practice in non-Arabic speaking parts of the Islamic world. In the 1970s in Afghanistan I bought a beautiful metal potincised with Kufic letters, which I was later told were completely meaningless.

Professor Hillenbrand’s talk ended with a very interesting discussion of just how the painters managed to paintletters on the rough surface of the pot. His suggestion was that they used stencils, which not only prevented smudging,but also gave the painters authentic texts which were reproduceable for the mass market.

BAILEY MEMORIAL LECTUREJAMES CORMICK

In November 2008, we weredelighted to host a one-day seminar

on ‘New Research in the Field ofIndian Art’, organised by ourTrustee Richard Blurton. The dayconsisted of five fascinating andbeautifully illustrated talks, onhighly engaging topics:‘The ElusivePandyas: material culture under amedieval South Indian dynasty’(Sona Datta, British Museum);‘Retelling the Ramayana: SouthIndian temple hangings of the 19thcentury’(Anna Dallpiccola, formerProfessor of Indian Art, South AsiaInstitute, Heidelberg); ‘Tribal orAdivasi heritage? Decolonisationand museology in India’ (Dr DanielRycroft, UEA); ‘Textiles in pre-Islamic India: the evidence ofAjanta’ (Rosemary Crill, V&AMuseum); and ‘Assamese Vaishnavatextiles: ritual, trade and plunder’(Richard Blurton, British Museum).The seminar was very well-attended,with plenty of lively discussion.Moreover, it brought many welcomenew faces to the Trust.

NEW HONORARY FELLOWSWe are delighted to announce the appointment of two new Honorary Fellowsof the Trust, Professor Robert Hillenbrand and Professor Minoru Hara.

Robert Hillenbrand, who gave the Bailey Memorial Lecture at the Trust inDecember 2008, is Emeritus Professor of Islamic Art, University of

Edinburgh. He was educated at the universities ofCambridge and Oxford and taught at theDepartment of Fine Art, University of Edinburghfrom 1971 until his retirement in 2007. He haspublished some 120 articles on aspects of Islamicart and architecture and his books includeImperial Images of Persian Painting, Islamic Artand Architecture, The Architecture of OttomanJerusalem, Studies in Medieval Islamic Art andthe prize-winning Islamic Architecture: form,

function and meaning. In 1977 he curated one of the largest exhibitions ofPersian miniature painting ever held.

Minoru Hara, a member of the Japan Academy, is Emeritus Professor ofSanskrit Language and Literature, University ofTokyo and, for ten years, was also Professor of theInternational College of Advanced BuddhistStudies. He studied Sanskrit at the University ofTokyo and Harvard and worked with the lateProfessor John Brough in Cambridge, whoseCollected Papers (1992) he co-edited with J.C.Wright. He is the author of Tapas in theMahabharata (Tokyo, 1979, in Japanese) andPasupata Studies (Vienna 2002) as well as over 100

articles in English and Japanese.

DISABLED ACCESSWe are very pleased to let you knowthat the Trust now has a wheelchairramp and a dedicated disabled park-ing space. It has taken several yearsto fulfil this long-held intention dueto a shortage of funds and theextremely complicated logistics ofthe whole project. We got there inthe end however (with some finan-cial help from Cambridge CityCouncil), and it all looks rather nice!

The ramp was inaugurated beforeour Friday lecture on 1 May 2009 byProfessor John Hinnells, a closeassociate, who thanked the Trust forthe considerable amount of money –and willpower – it had put into theproject, and City Councillor ClaireBlair, Chair of the CommunityServices Scrutiny Committee. Theall too enticing sight of a big pair ofscissors, bright red ribbon and aphoto opportunity also proved to be

The Library has received somevaluable bequests in recent

months. Before his death in October2008, Ralph Pinder-Wilson, a notedspecialist in Islamic art and Persianhad donated 281 books, about 200sale catalogues and 32 exhibitioncatalogues. In November, we receiveda further 300 books in addition toapproximately 10 boxes of his work-ing papers and slide collection.

We have also received a donationof 151 books from the library of thelate Dr Patrick Considine (1935-2008). Paddy Considine, who taughtfor many years at UniversityCollege London, was a specialist inArmenian and the books donated byhis family will add considerably tothe importance of the Trust’sArmenian collection, most of whichwas was originally collected by SirHarold Bailey.

Mr Cyrus Mehta gave us acollection of 58 early twentieth-century Indian postcards. Thesehave since been digitised by one ofour volunteers, Syd Turkington, whois now working on a description ofthem for us.

We would also like to thank thefollowing for their donations to theLibrary:

J. Amrolia Bi Bo

Brepols publishers Johnny CheungGerry ColdhamJames Cormick

Elizabeth Gershevitch Éva M. Jeremiás

Agnes Korn Cyrus Mehta Minoru HaraGita Hariri

Almut Hintze Sam Lieu

Jo McGregorRaymond Mercier Takao Moriyasu

Ellen Raven Rong Xinjiang

Nicholas and Ursula Sims-Williams Dan Waugh

Yutaka Yoshida Zhu Yugi

LIBRARY NEWS

irresistable for Rubi Ahmad-Cooke,who overcame her bashfulness in aninstant and raced up the ramp just intime to seize the limelight and ‘help’with the ceremonial snip.

AIITAIIT NNEWSEWS 4 4

BOOK PRIZE

NEW LOOKWEBSITE

Some of you will hopefully havenoticed that the Trust’s website

(www.indiran.org) has had a bit of amakeover. Some content has yet tobe added and updated, but youshould be able to find the informationyou are looking for. Our thanks goto Charles Malcolm-Brown for hisdesign template and Helen Sims-Williams for all her work in puttingthe new website together.

Also coming soon to the site is theHoward Wilson Sri Lankan Archive,a collection of around 2000 slidescentred on Buddhist art in Sri Lanka.The late Professor Howard Wilsonheld the Chair in Trans-CulturalStudies at Capital University, Ohioand the slides have been painstakenlydigitised by his widow Marti Wilsonover the last 3 years. We would liketo thank Marti for bringing thiscollection to the Trust and for all herwork in digitising it, and Bryce

We congratulate Nicholas Sims-Williams, one of our Trustees,

and Christine van Ruymbeke, one ofour Friends, who were amongst thisyear’s winners of the ‘World Prizefor the Book of the Year’ offeredannually by the Islamic Republic ofIran. At a ceremony in Tehran on 7February 2009 Nicholas and Christinereceived their prizes personally fromPresident Ahmedinejad. Their winningbooks were Nicholas Sims-Williams’Bactrian documents from NorthernAfghanistan and Christine vanRuymbeke’s Science and Poetry inMedieval Persia, the Botany ofNizami's Khamsa.

On his recent 60th birthday,Nicholas was also presented with aFestschrift, Exegisti monumenta,edited by Werner Sundermann,Almut Hintze and François de Blois.This contains 40 articles related toIranian studies, contributed by lead-ing scholars, and is part of theIranica series edited by MariaMacuch.

Since spring 2008 the ‘Sogdian Club’ has been meeting regularly at theTrust to read texts in Sogdian, the mediaeval Iranian language of

Samarkand. Led by Professor Nicholas Sims-Williams a group of scholarsand students has been reading a variety of Christian, Manichean andBuddhist texts. The photograph shows some of the participants on a visit tothe British Library, where they are looking at one of the oldest knownSogdian documents, a letter written by a Sogdian merchant at the beginningof the 4th century.

SOGDIAN CLUB

Mildenhall for so skillfully adaptingit for the web. We are very excitedthat this project is now approachingfruition, not only because it willmake this valuable collectionavailable to researchers online, butbecause it is a pilot for a number offuture projects involving othersignificant photographic collectionsheld by the Trust. These include thecollections of Joan van Lohuizen,James Harle, Raymond and BridgetAllchin, and Penelope Betjeman,which are at various stages of beingcatalogued and amount to around60,000 images. Christophe RoustanDelatour, Assistant Curator at theMuseum of Cannes, is at presentcataloguing the Himalayan sectionof the Betjeman collection (around3-4000 prints and 1000 slides),which he describes as ‘an unequalled,indispensable resource for the studyof architecture and sculpture in theWestern Himalayas’. Also, Dr EllenRaven from Leiden University isworking on the Joan van Lohuizencollection.

BURSARIESIn the last two years, AIIT

bursaries have been awarded to:

Samra Azarnouche (EPHE, Paris)

Professor Iain Gardner (University of Sydney)

Ross Burns (Macquarie University, Sydney)

Dr Ellen Raven (University of Leiden)

Christophe Roustan Delatour(Museum of Cannes)

Bursaries of up to £500, to help withtravel and accommodation costs, areavailable for people wishing tocome and use the Trust’s library fora specific project. A bursary in thename of Ralph Pinder-Wilson wasalso announced at a recent memorialevent held for him at the Trust (seep. 7). For details of how to apply,please see our website or contact ourAdministrator on 01223 356841 orinfo@indiran.org.

AIITAIIT NNEWSEWS 5 5

On Saturday 17 January 2009, onwhat would have been his 90th

birthday, a large number of Ralph’sfriends went to Our Lady of VictoriesChurch in Kensington to attend the12:30 mass, which was being sungin his memory. It was a gloriouslysunny afternoon in the middle ofwinter and at the appropriatemoments in the mass when the choir,accompanied by the organ, wassinging parts of Mozart’s Requiem,the stillness in the church was sadand beautiful and full of memories.It was as Ralph would have liked it.

Ralph’s nephew, Richard Robinson,organised the service, and the directorof music at Ralph’s church, CharlesCole, provided the choir and organist.And they are just the first of themany names I shall mention in thistribute. It is not an official obituary(for that, see Michael Roger’sexcellent piece in The Times, 10November 2008), but more amustering of the troops, of thosewhose lives were in some wayaffected by Ralph.

First of all his family. Ralph hadthree brothers and one sister. Ralphand his brother Bill remainedunmarried, but his sister Juliamarried and produced three children:Jonathan, Richard and Sally; hisbrother Alan two: Caroline andVanessa; and his brother John one:Johanna. A large family, therefore,and one which no doubt providedearly training in the social skillsRalph was so noted for in later life.

As for the rest of us, Ralph touchedour lives in different ways. RaymondAllchin, one of the founding trusteesof the Ancient India and Iran Trust,first remembers him at WestminsterSchool before the War, where Ralphwas the exact contemporary ofRaymond’s older brother. Anotherfounding trustee, Sir Harold Bailey,who like Ralph was an Oxford man,although of an earlier generation,was both a colleague and a goodfriend. I remember Sir Harold recol-lecting with delight a long journey

by car he, Ralph, and anotherOrientalist (whose name, unfortunately,I don’t remember) took to the WestCountry in the late 1950s (one can’thelp thinking of Three Men in aBoat). Ralph was the driver and theytravelled through Wiltshire, SirHarold’s home county, and Dorset,where, among other things, theyvisited the grave of T.E. Lawrence inthe churchyard at Moreton, andchuckled over the most peculiarrecumbent effigy of Lawrence byEric Kennington in St. Martin’sChurch in Wareham.

Another more recent friend ofRalph’s, Alan Rush, the Middle-Easthistorian, who was also a fellowcongregant at Our Lady of Victories,has discovered a reference to Ralph atabout this time in Letters from theMiddle East by R.W. Hamilton(1992, p.190). That Hamilton is fullof praise for Ralph comes as nosurprise:

18 July 1959 Harran (Turkey):Ralph Pinder-Wilson is the nicest personimaginable, who carries kind-hearted-ness almost to the point of caricature –e.g. this evening I left my dark glasseson the site and said ‘damnation’ (orwords to that effect) when I discovered ithaving reached home. He instantlyoffered to go and fetch them for mebecause we had been discussing some-thing together at the time on the site.

My own friendship with Ralphstarted in 1977 in Afghanistan. I wasthere on British Council/Ministry ofOverseas Development business,trying to reform the EnglishLanguage curriculum in the Afghaneducational system. The BritishEmbassy in Kabul gave me a veryhandsome house in the LittleCompound, which had originallybeen the Doctor’s House. And I wassoon to be joined in the compoundby the British Institute of AfghanStudies (BIAS), who were offeredwhat had originally been theHospital. Ralph had recently beenappointed its Director and waspleased to arrange its removal to themore salubrious quarter of Karte-Parwan and the relative security ofthe British Embassy Compound,which was guarded by a contingentof fierce Gurkhas.

Characteristically, under Ralph’sdirectorship, the BIAS house in theLittle Compound became a socialand cultural centre, rivalling theBritish Council offices in Share-Nau. The Embassy handed over itsextremely good library to BIAS andLavinia Davies, another very goodfriend of Ralph’s, came out to Kabulto help shelve and catalogue it. Thiswas also the time when the Societyof Afghan Studies was conducting adig in Kandahar under the directionof Sven Helms, and when thediggers, who included RichardBlurton (now of the British Museumand a Trustee of the Ancient India &Iran Trust) and Warwick Ball (theco-editor of the festschrift for Ralph,Cairo to Kabul, 2002), came up toKabul, the BIAS house was awashwith youthful high spirits.

Ralph also generously accommo-dated others. Joseph Elfenbein wasthen carrying out research on theBaluch language in Pakistan andwas a frequent and amusing visitor.Hugh Beattie was conducting socialanthropological research in anAfghan village and was also to beseen on occasions looking rather

RALPH PINDER-WILSON 1919-2008JAMES CORMICK

Historian of Islamic art, archaeologist,museum curator and Honorary Fellow of theAncient India and Iran Trust, Ralph Pinder-Wilson, who died aged 89 in October 2008.

AIITAIIT NNEWSEWS : R: RALPHALPH P P INDERINDER -W-W ILSONILSON 6 6

AIIT NAIIT NEWSEWS : R: RALPHALPH P P INDERINDER -W-W ILSONILSON 7 7battered and back in Kabul for restand recreation. But perhaps the mostbizarre group of people to stay in theBIAS house was an entire team ofrather impecunious Polish moun-taineers, whom Ralph had taken pity on.

Those were the days when peoplefrom other communist countriescould travel cheaply through theSoviet Union. In the case of themountaineers this meant flying byAeroflot from Warsaw to Moscowand then from Moscow to Dushanbein Tajikistan. They would then haveto go by bus from Dushanbe toTermez in Uzbekistan, where theycould cross the border intoAfghanistan and carry on throughMazare-Sharif down to Kabul. Iremember the mountaineers telling methat they were treated very suspiciouslyin those Central Asian republics untilthey made it quite clear they were notRussians – after which they weretreated as welcome guests and fellowsufferers.

When the beastly Russians finallytook over in Afghanistan, as is wellknown, Ralph got into trouble withthe new regime. He was accused ofsmuggling antiquities, spying, andwho knows what else, and put inprison. For those of us who knew theold Soviet Union, these were fairlystandard accusations levelled atanyone the authorities had determinedto punish or get rid of. Why Ralph?Well, the British Embassy officialswere more difficult to attack, andRalph was seen as influential not onlyamong the European expatriates butthe dissident Afghans as well. It is ameasure of his courage and strengthof character that he finally came outof his ordeal in the filthy and danger-ous prison relatively unscathed.

In his latter years, in retirement,he was once again able to enjoy thecompany of his family and largecircle of friends in London. He alsobecame a great friend and HonoraryFellow of the Trust. He visited usfrequently and decided to leave theTrust his very fine collection ofbooks on Islamic Art. The last timewe saw him was in September lastyear on one of his book-deliveryexpeditions up to Cambridge with

Wak Kani and his sons.

Hafiz, why art thou ever telling o’erThe tale of absence and of sorrow’s night?Knowest thou not that parting goes beforeAll meeting, and from darkness comes

the light!

(Gertrude Bell, Poems from theDivan of Hafiz, 1897).

AIITMEMORIAL

EVENT

FRIENDS OFTHE TRUST

Sadly, the celebration planned atthe Trust on 30 January 2009 for

Ralph Pinder-Wilson’s 90th birthdayhad to be changed to a memorialevent instead. But in celebratingRalph’s life and work it was in manyways a joyful occasion.

Dr Barbara Brend gave a veryengaging and beautifully illustratedtalk entitled ‘Arts of Islamic Lands:a tribute to Ralph Pinder-Wilson’, inwhich she discussed the valuableand wide-ranging contributionRalph had made to the study of thisfield. Many of Ralph’s familymembers were present and after thelecture his nephew, RichardRobinson, said how wonderful itwas for them all to learn about hisuncle’s work, about which many ofthem had known very little.

Portrait of Ralph Pinder-Wilson donated tothe Trust by his family

Detail from 17th-century ArmenianGospel Book

Trust’s Armenian manuscripts,presented by Dr Vrej Nersessianfrom the British Library.

This year’s event is inspired bythe the 2009 celebrations of EdwardFitzGerald’s Rubaiyat of OmarKhayyam, marking both the 150thanniversary of the publication andthe 200th anniversary of FitzGerald’sbirth. On Friday 23 October, BillMartin and Sandra Mason will bespeaking on ‘The Music of theRubaiyat’. Longstanding Friends ofthe Trust, Bill and Sandra are alsothe authors of The Art of OmarKhayyam: illustrating FitzGerald'sRubaiyat (2007). They have awebsite dedicated to the Rubaiyat,(www.omarkhayyamrubaiyat.com),which also lists the special eventstaking place this year.

If you would like to become aFriend of the Trust, please contactour Administrator, Munizha Ahmad-Cooke, on 01223 356841 orinfo@indiran.org for an applicationform.You can also download a formfrom our website, www.indiran.org.

Encouragingly, the Trust continuesto attract new Friends which, for

an annual subscription of £30 or alife subscription of £400, is one ofthe most helpful ways in whichpeople can support our work.

As thanks for this support, wehave been organising some eventsexclusively for Friends. In 2008,there were two such occasions: ascreening of the 1937 Marathi classicSant Tukaram, introduced byProfessor Rachel Dwyer (SOAS),and a chance for Friends to learnabout and take a closer look at the

OUR VOLUNTEERSAIIT NAIIT NEWSEWS : V: VOLUNTEERSOLUNTEERS 8 8

Many visitors to the Trust have commented fondly on its informal atmosphere and having been made to feel likepart of the ‘family’. Indeed, over the last 30 years the Trust family has grown considerably extending to many

parts of the world. Yet some very valuable members – our volunteers – who help us carry out work we would other-wise find it difficult to do, can be easily overlooked. With only three paid, part-time staff – our Custodian JamesCormick, Assistant Librarian Jose John and Administrator Munizha Ahmad-Cooke – our human resources arestretched to say the least, but we have been very fortunate in attracting volunteers who have given us their time andskills consistently for a number of years. The longest serving of these are James Rankin and Lady Charlotte Pippard.

James Rankin visited the Trust 10 years ago on an open day in which several local establishments were partici-pating. As well as having worked in the Middle East, he had visited both India and Iran and had a keen interest in

the history of these regions. He was shown around the Trust and remembers ourChair, Dr Bridget Allchin, inviting him back for some of the curry she waspreparing. He didn’t make it back for lunch but a couple of years later, followinghis retirement from the civil service, he revisited the Trust, which the Allchinshad told him was quite hard up, and offered his services as a volunteer. Sincethen, James has completed several important and painstaking projects in ourlibrary including the listing of the Allchin Slide Collection, Sir Harold Bailey’sand Charles Bawden’s offprints and sorting through Sir Harold’s correspondence.He and his wife Grace, another longstanding volunteer of the Trust (who has alsomade a significant culinary contribution to our in-house celebrations), also spenta week in Germany sorting out Professor Emmerick’s offprints. James is

currently carrying out a detailed stock check of the library. He says he has been able to adapt well to these some-what laborious jobs because of his past auditing experience. He adds that what attracted him to the Trust was its‘lovely, calm and friendly atmosphere’ and he has always enjoyed meeting the variety of people who come here towork on specific projects or use the library during the morning coffee break,which brings everyone together and has become an institution in itself.

Lady Charlotte Pippard, an experienced bookbinder, started volunteering atthe Trust in 2004 and since then has quietly worked away at repairing our booksand keeping them from falling apart. She first visited the Trust as part of a groupof NADFAS volunteers (National Association of Decorative & Fine ArtsSocieties) who used to come every other week to dust the books. Charlottestarted to come every week and continued coming when NADFAS stopped. Itwas known that she was a bookbinder and had rebound several catalogues forthe Fitzwilliam Museum (she had to stop when she broke her wrist because theywere so heavy). She started repairing books at the Trust and taking some home for rebinding. Charlotte, who choseto study bookbinding and calligraphy rather than fine art at college, says she loves using her hands and has to makethings: ‘If a book is well bound, it is well bound and not subject to opinion like a painting’. She too emphasises thefriendly atmosphere of the Trust and enjoys the Mondays she spends here, which have become a landmark in herweek. Volunteering and doing charitable work, she says, gives her a warm feeling and she enjoys being able to dosomething she likes.

As well as James and Charlotte we have recently attracted a few more volunteers including John House, whojoined us over a year ago and is now busy helping us fundraise for our 30th Anniversary Appeal, Shashi Sen, SydTurkington, Heather Procter Smith and Lynn Welland, who are all assisting with various library projects.

HAVE YOU GOTYOURS YET?

The must-have of the season, the Ancient India &Iran Trust eco bag is proving to be very popular,

and a snip at just £2! All profits go towards our 30thAnniversary Appeal, so pick one up when you next

visit us or contact us on 01223 356841 or info@indi-ran.org if you would like to order one (a little extra forP&P willl be added). Look out for more merchandise

in the near future including postcards and mugs.

James Rankin

Lady Charlotte Pippard