Apor Éva (szerk.): Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Könyvtára Keleti Gyűjtemény.

The Szilágyi Collection

The Szilágyi Collection 6 A

theologian of Debrecen-turned-simple Hussar, Dániel Szilágyi (1830-1885) emigrated to Istanbul with Lajos Kossuth after the quelling of the Hungarian war of liberation of 1848-49 and lived there until his death. He acquired an excellent command of Turkish and became an acknowledged interpreter. His interest was kindled in the records of Turkish literacy. He opened a small bookshop and began collecting Turkish manuscripts. Soon the shop of the tercüman was famous for its rare manuscripts, and many scholarly hocas and ulemas visited it regularly. Ármin Vámbéiy and Ignác Kúnos also called on the shop several times. After Dániel Szilágyi's death, thanks to the efforts of Ármin Vámbéry the manuscripts came into the possession of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. The collection was first described in some detail by Ignác Kúnos in his article Collectio Szilágyiana. Dániel Szilágyi's library has 500 manuscripts, 438 of them in Turkish, the rest in Persian and Arabic. Up to this day, this material constitutes the core of the Turkish manuscripts in the Oriental Collection. A great part of the manuscripts are devoted to the history Táríh-i Enveri, MS Török F. 36 of the Ottoman Empire, including saliently the period of Ottoman rule in Hungary. Excellent chronicles can be found here about the history of Osman's dynasty, including Teváríh-i Ál-i Osmán by an anonymous author (Török 0. 204), the Táríh-i Enveri (Török F. 36), the historical work of Ibrahim Pegevi born in Pécs (Török 0. 217), or the chronicle of Kügük Ni§anci (Török O. 94) from 1578, valuable sources to the sieges of Hungarian fortresses such as Kanizsa, Kőszeg, etc. More than two hundred manuscripts are literary works, including several divans, tezkeres, e.g. Molla Hasan felebi's Tezkeret-u§-§uara (Török 0. 220), A§ik pa§a's divan (Török F. 1.), two copies of Ferec b'ad-e§-§idde (Török F. 17, Török Q. 5), the works of Nizámi, Fariduddin "Attar in the Turkish version by §eyhi Mevláná Yűsuf, etc. Iskendernáme, MS Török O. 83