Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Library, Patna-Bihar

Khuda Bakhsh Oriental Library, in Patna, Bihar, is one of the national libraries of India. It was founded on 1848 by Sir Muhammed Bakhsh and opened to the public on the 28th of October in 1891 by The Honourable Dr. Justice Sir Khan Bahadur Khuda Bakhsh.Its collection started with 4,000 of Bakhsh’s own manuscripts, of which he inherited 1,400 from his father, Sir Mohammed Bakhsh, a lawyer from Patna.

The library has a large collection of Islamic, Sanskrit, Persian, Urdu, Hindi and Kashmiri manuscripts, and art. This includes 35,000 manuscripts (21,000 rare manuscripts and 14,000 small manuscripts), 2,082,904 printed books in Arabic, Persian, Urdu, Turkish, Pushto, Sanskrit, Hindi, Punjabi, English, French, German, Russian, and Japanese.It also curates more than 2,000 paintings made during the Rajput and Mughal eras of India. The library has about 5,000,000 items in total.

It is an autonomous organization under the Ministry of Culture, Government of India, and is governed by a board with the governor of Bihar as its ex officio chairman. Day-to-day responsibility falls to the library director who presently is Dr. Shayesta Bedar. The library is also a designated Manuscript Conservation Centre (MCC) under the National Mission for Manuscripts.

It is considered to have the best collection of Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Hindi Manuscripts and Literature. It is the 2nd Largest library in the world in term of Islamic literature collection. It is considered to be the most prominent Oriental Public library in the world.