Arabic & Persian Research Institute, Tonk

Roughly 95 kilometres south of Jaipur, in the quiet district town of Tonk, sits a scholarly institution that most visitors to Rajasthan never hear about — the Maulana Abul Kalam Azad Arabic and Persian Research Institute, usually shortened to MAAPRI.

• Behind its unassuming government façade lies one of the most important repositories of Islamic-world manuscripts in India: thousands of hand-copied Arabic and Persian volumes on Sufism, history, medicine, philosophy, astronomy, poetry and law, alongside luminous illuminated Qurans whose gold-leaf margins and reed-pen calligraphy have survived centuries.
• The collection has deep local roots.
• Tonk was the seat of a small princely state whose nineteenth-century Nawabs were unusually devoted book-collectors and patrons of learning.
• Their private Saeedia Library — several thousand manuscripts strong — formed the nucleus of what became a dedicated research branch here in the early 1960s, later reorganised and expanded into the institute you can visit today.
• Where such family libraries were often scattered or lost after 1947, Tonk's was gathered, catalogued and conserved by the state, which is exactly why scholars from across India and abroad still travel to this modest town to read a single rare folio.
• What makes a visit rewarding rather than merely dutiful is the display gallery, developed to bring the archive out of its locked stacks.
• Here you can stand before oversized Qurans, delicate miniatures, calligraphic panels and historical documents without needing a research permit — a rare chance to see how a manuscript was actually made, from paper and pigment to binding.
• Staff are used to curious travellers and, if they are not busy, will happily point out the finest pieces.
• It is a place for slow looking, not selfies.
• For the vegetarian traveller, plan food around the trip rather than the town.
• Tonk is a small place with limited certified pure-vegetarian, egg-free dining, so the sensible approach is to carry your own snacks, water and fruit, and to eat a proper meal in Jaipur at either end of the drive.
• The verified pure-veg, eggless kitchens on our list — places such as Kanha on Tonk Road, Rawat Misthan Bhandar and Laxmi Misthan Bhandar — all lie back in the city, roughly 95 kilometres north, so top up before you set out.
• Simple tea and biscuits are easy to find near the institute; a full guaranteed vegetarian lunch is not.
• Combine the institute with Tonk's golden-ceilinged Sunehri Kothi and, if you have a full day and a car, the vast Bisalpur Dam nearby, and you have an offbeat heritage circuit that rewards travellers who like their history quiet, textual and genuinely uncrowded.