PATNA: When Khan Bahadur Khuda Bakhsh opened his book collection to the public in the late-19th century, he was fulfilling his father\u2019s wish. Little did he know that, over the decades, their private library would grow into one of India\u2019s richest repositories of the intellectual heritage of South Asia and the Middle East.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Bakhsh family was a family of jurists and scholars, who migrated from Delhi in the early-19th century and established themselves in Patna \u2014 the capital of the eastern Indian state of Bihar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Khuda Bakhsh\u2019s father, Mohammed Bakhsh, was a lawyer and bibliophile, who collected 1,400 Arabic and Persian manuscripts. His son increased the collection to 4,000.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHe was spending all his money, all his assets, on developing this library, acquiring the manuscripts from all over the world,\u201d Dr. Shayesta Bedar, the library\u2019s former director, told Arab News.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cHis father desired that Khuda Baksh should make a library for the use of the public, and it should also specialize in manuscripts. He kept the word.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Library opened in Patna in 1891, in a two-story building near the banks of the Ganges, where it still stands today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The building of Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Library in Patna, India, March 2025. (AN Photo)
It now holds more than 2 million items, including books, calligraphy, paintings and 21,136 manuscripts \u2014 half of them in Arabic and another few thousand in Persian.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The library\u2019s founder had an employee named Makki, whose sole duties were to search for and buy centuries-old works on science, history and Islamic studies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cMakki used to roam all over the world \u2026 and he was acquiring them from different places,\u201d Bedar said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201c(Khuda Bakhsh) was a rich man. He was an advocate, he has his own lands, and he had no other passion except to develop this library.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Among the rarest manuscripts in the library\u2019s holdings is the \u201cKitab Al-Tasrif.\u201d Known in English as \u201cThe Method of Medicine,\u201d it is an Arabic encyclopedia of medical procedures written near the year 1000 by Abu Al-Qasim Al-Zahrawi, a famed Arab physician from Andalusia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This collage of photos shows pages from medieval Arabic manuscripts, \u201cKitab Al-Hashaish,\u201d left, and \u201cKitab Al-Tasrif,\u201d center and right, from the collection of Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Library in Patna, India. (Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Library)
Al-Zahrawi is considered the father of operative surgery and is credited with performing the first thyroidectomy and introducing more than 200 surgical tools.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another rare work is the \u201cKitab Al-Hashaish,\u201d known as the \u201cBook of Herbs,\u201d which is the Arabic translation of the famous Greek botanical and medical text known by Dioscorides, a 1st-century physician and pharmacologist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese are 11th-century works \u2026 Today\u2019s medical science has been based on this \u2018Kitab Al-Tasrif.\u2019 And \u2018Kitab Al-Hashaish\u2019 is a collection of works that deal with medicinal plants and animals. These are some of the rarest manuscripts,\u201d Bedar said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Among the most prominent Persian works in the collection is the original manuscript of \u201cTarikh-e Khandan-e Timuriyah\u201d (\u201cChronicle of the Descendants of Timur\u201d), a 16th-century work commissioned by Mughal Emperor Akbar, which describes the descendants of the 14th-century ruler Timur in Iran and India, including Babur, Humayun and Akbar himself.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Another one is the \u201cDivan of Hafez,\u201d a collection of works by the 14th-century Persian Sufi poet Hafez.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThis (volume) was used by Mughal emperors to take out the omens and the writing of these Mughal kings, notes, are on the margins of the manuscript,\u201d Bedar said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese (manuscripts) are a few to be named \u2014 just a glimpse \u2026 These are the rarest ones, which are not available anywhere else in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The library has been administrated by the Indian government since the 1950s. In 1969, Parliament declared it an Institution of National Importance, which is fully funded by the Ministry of Culture.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since 2023, works have been underway to digitalize the library\u2019s collection and many texts are already available online \u2014 expanding the reach of Khuda Bakhsh\u2019s library far beyond the Patna community it was intended for.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But most of the research work still happens offline, in the library\u2019s reading rooms.\u201cWe are connected with the libraries of Saudi Arabia, like the library of the Prophet\u2019s Mosque in Madinah \u2026 People from the Arab world come here for research,\u201d Shakeel Ahmad Shamsi, the library\u2019s information officer, told Arab News.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe have about 10,000 Arabic manuscripts in this collection, about 8,000 or 9,000 in Persian, and in other languages also like Urdu, Hindi, Sanskrit, Pashto, Turkish \u2026 This library is famous for its manuscripts \u2026 it is famous in the whole world.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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