Paul Kahle's Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts of the Chester Beatty Library, Dublin

After fleeing to England due to the Nazi regime, during the years 1939 through 1947 Paul Kahle worked on the cataloguing of more than fifteen hundred Arabic manuscripts. However, his work never achieved the desired editorial outcomes. After being hired by the American collector Alfred Chester Beatty, Kahle compiled for him the analytical descriptions of 1,164 Arabic manuscripts, mostly purchased from Aslan Sarkissian since 1935. Among these he described an additional 108 manuscripts, of which five belonged to the former Alexander George Ellis collection and were all since purchased by Beatty upon Ellis's death (1942) or shortly after, and the other 103 are from an unidentified source. None of these latter Kahle descriptions were ever published or examined. Following an introduction on Chester Beatty's interest in collecting Arabic manuscripts, this paper focuses on Paul Kahle's almost decade-long work on Beatty'sArabic manuscripts, its cataloguing process and his highly detailed handwritten cards which have been preserved in its original and unearthed version at the University of Turin, where the Paul Kahle Archive has been hosted since 1966. A comprehensive concordance table is provided in the Appendix, including: all of Kahle's cards, their current call number at the Chester Beatty Library, their archival signature within the Fondo Paul Kahle in Turin, the references to photocopies of Kahle's typewritten cards at the Chester Beatty Library, the references to Arberry's Handlist of the Arabic Manuscripts of the Chester Beatty Library, dated texts, unique copies, and autographs.