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Haziq and Mohi’s reported appeal lies in a combination that is hard to replace: uncommon books in Urdu, Persian, Arabic and other languages; material on Hyderabad and the Deccan; and a bookseller’s specialist knowledge of a densely stocked collection. Historians and writers have described the Old City shop as a valuable place to find books and records that may be difficult to locate elsewhere. That reputation is documented; a current inventory and present-day visitor access are not confirmed.
What kind of collection made the shop distinctive?
Haziq and Mohi is in Hyderabad’s Old City, in the Murgi Chowk and Chowk area. Reporting traces the business to 1972, when Ahmed Bin Mohammed Bafna developed a shop around a substantial collection inherited from his grandfather, Salim Bin Ali Bafanna. The family’s stated purpose was to pass that inherited knowledge to younger generations.
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Accounts describe thousands of books across Urdu, Persian, Arabic and other languages, including Telugu, Farsi, French and English. The subjects range well beyond literature: reported holdings include poetry and dictionaries, Hyderabad and Deccan history, local records and census material, philosophy, mysticism, religion, medicine, Islamic art and architecture, and manuscripts. These are categories documented in reporting, not confirmation that any particular title is on the shelves now.
Two published estimates illustrate the collection’s scale but should not be treated as a current count. Scroll described “thousands of books” in 2019; Telangana Today used the phrase “over 10,000 antique collections” in 2022 without explaining how it counted them. Scroll also reported in 2019 that the shop occupied about 400 square feet and that roughly a quarter of the collection had been catalogued at that time.
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The strongest case for the shop is the intersection of language and place. A reader looking for Urdu or Persian writing, or for printed material tied to Hyderabad and the Deccan, may need to search beyond the standardized, readily indexed books found in large online catalogs. The reports describe Haziq and Mohi as holding poetry, historical works, dictionaries, records and manuscripts that make it useful as a research stop.
City historian Sajjad Shahid told Scroll, “You cannot get reliable rare books on the internet.” He recalled finding works by Urdu and Persian poet Rajeshwar Rao and books by Maharaja Kishen Pershad at the shop after looking elsewhere. Shahid also called places like it “the last sources for such information.” Those remarks explain the shop’s perceived value; they do not establish that every title is unique or unavailable from another source.
How did the bookseller shape the experience?
A large collection is useful only if readers can navigate it. Scroll described Ahmed Bafanna, an Osmania University linguistics graduate proficient in several languages, as able to retrieve books quickly from the crowded shop. Shahid remembered him as “one of the last of the old breed of bookstore owners who were scholars themselves, and could hold forth on any topic under the sun.”
That knowledge mattered especially when the collection was not fully arranged or searchable. Scroll quoted Ahmed’s younger brother, Khaled Bafanna: “Ahmed bhai knew everything, so he never felt the need to sort according to subject.” The News Minute also reported that Ahmed used contacts and travelers to acquire books in bulk. Together, these accounts suggest that the shop’s reputation came not just from what it held, but from the expertise that helped visitors find their way through it.
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Published accounts link the shop to historical research. India Today reported that William Dalrymple spent time sourcing Urdu and Persian texts at Haziq and Mohi while working on White Mughals. Mint described the shop’s legacy as a hub for information on Deccani history and mentioned White Mughals and The Last Nizam in that context. This supports a connection between the shop and research on Hyderabad’s past; it does not mean the shop supplied every source for either book.
The evidence for interest beyond Hyderabad is qualitative: reported visits or research by named writers and historians. No verified statistic establishes how many international visitors the shop has received, where they came from, or how often scholars have used it. The phrase “from the world over” is therefore best understood as an expression of reputation, not a measured description of its audience.
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What is known about the shop’s present-day access?
After Ahmed Bafanna died in 2015, family members took responsibility for the store. Scroll’s 2019 feature described Khaled Bafanna, his son Ibrahim and nephew Zubair working to catalogue and digitise books while dealing with preservation and binding challenges. The article said a website was planned; it does not establish that a searchable catalog or remote ordering service subsequently launched.
Current opening status and hours are uncertain. A third-party Magicpin listing crawled in 2026 gives an address and hours of noon to 7 p.m., while a Reddit user posting on 26 February 2026 said an online result showed the shop as permanently closed and that the listed phone number could not be reached. Neither account is authoritative confirmation. Contact the shop through a reliable, current channel before making a trip; its present inventory, walk-in arrangements and catalog access have not been reliably established.
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