The Kégl Library

Sándor Kégl
Taught by Ignác Goldziher and Ármin Vámbéry, corresponding member of the Academy Sándor Kégl (1862–1920) was the first professor of Persian language and literature at the Budapest University.

A highly versatile scholar and landowner with a wide spectrum of interests, he had close ties with the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences: he compiled the first catalogue of the Oriental manuscripts and described the Turkish, Persian and Arabic manuscripts that were preserved by the Academy at that time.

After his death his large library of some 11,000 volumes was donated to the Academy by his brother János Kégl (1925). The Kégl library is among the largest single donations in the history of the Academy Library, rivalled only by the 30,000-volume Teleki library and the Ráth collection, which had laid the foundation of the Library's corpus of pre-1711 Hungarian books.

Khosrou va Shirin (MS Per. O. 58)

The stock of Persian manuscripts so far numbering some 60 and catalogued by Kégl earlier, was enlarged by another 59 pieces from the Kégl collection. Several outstanding works of classical Persian literature are among the manuscripts, such as the divans of Hafiz (Per. O. 68), Anvari (Per. O. 86), Amir Khosrou Dihlavi (Per. O. 79), Nizami's Khosrou va Shirin in two copies (Per. O. 58 and O. 73), several works on lexicography, grammar, astrology and medicine.

The earliest Persian manuscript of the Oriental Collection, a Kalila va Dimna (Per. O. 57) copied in 1319, also comes from the Kégl library.