Close to the imposing Arts College building of the Osmania University is the Dairat-ul-Maarif or the Osmania Oriental Publications Bureau, a unique institution dedicated to Arabic studies. Orientalists, scholars and academicians all over the world are greatly appreciative of the pioneering work of the Daira in collecting, preserving, editing and publishing rare and hitherto unpublished works in Arabic from the 9th to the 14th century. This era witnessed the richest literary, religious, philosophical and scientific work by scholars in the Arabic language. Founded in 1888 by Imad-ul-Mulk Sayyid Husain Bilgrami C.S.1.,

Fazilat Jung, Maulana Muhammed Anwarullah Khan and Mullah Abdul Q ayyum and a group of scholars devoted to Oriental studies, the institution has, during the 101 years of its existence, published more than 160 rare and valuable classics in the Arabic language in over 600 volumes.

They form an invaluable store-house for reference on subjects as diverse as commentaries on the Holy Quran, Philology and Medical Sciences, to name a few. The Dairat-ul-Maarif thus stands as the only one of its kind, a dynamic centre that draws increasing numbers of scholars and researchers from all over the world to savour its riches of Arabic literature, science and religious thought.

One of the prize publications of the Daira, the “AL-MIS-BAHAU’LM UDI”, is a record of letters sent by the Holy Prophet to foreign rulers and various dignitaries. The performance of the Daira in short can be judged from a statement made by the Rector of the Al-Azhar University of Cairo, “Daira has done for us that which we had not been able to do for ourselves.”