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The Salar Jung Museum, opened to the public in 1951 on the south bank of the Musi, is the personal collection of Mir Yousuf Ali Khan, Salar Jung III — wazir of the seventh Nizam and one of the great collectors of the twentieth century. Across his lifetime Salar Jung III amassed some forty thousand objects from across the Islamic, European and Indian worlds: Mughal painting and Persian carpets; Qajar enamels and European porcelain; Italian marbles, French clocks, Japanese lacquer, Bidri-work, Qur'ans in Kufic, Naskh and Thuluth hands; and a library of fifty thousand books and manuscripts. It is said to be the third-largest one-man art collection in the world.
The collector
Four decades spent assembling a vast private collection
Mir Yousuf Ali Khan succeeded his father as Salar Jung III in 1912 and served briefly as wazir to the seventh Nizam in 1914. Withdrawing thereafter from public life, he gave the next four decades to the building of his collection, scouring the auction houses of London, Paris, Cairo and Bombay and the private libraries of the wider Deccan. He died unmarried in 1949, leaving the entire collection to the nation.
From Diwan-Deodi to museum
From the family palace at Diwan-Deodi to a national museum
The collection was first housed in the Salar Jung family palace at Diwan-Deodi in the old city, where it was opened to the public in December 1951 by Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Outgrowing the palace, the collection was moved in 1968 to a new purpose-built museum on the south bank of the Musi, where it remains.
The galleries
Islamic, European and Far Eastern art under one roof
The thirty-nine galleries of the present museum range across Islamic, European and Far Eastern art — with particular strengths in Mughal jade and arms, Deccani painting, Persian and Turkish manuscripts, European nineteenth-century sculpture (the famous marble Veiled Rebecca by Giovanni Maria Benzoni is here), and a fine library of Arabic and Persian books. It is administered as one of the three National Museums of India.