Introduction
- This section includes the manuscripts preserved in the Paul Kahle Fonds: Islamic manuscripts, Samaritan manuscripts and Hebrew manuscripts/fragments. During his stay in Egypt (1903-1908) Paul Kahle bought Arabic, Persian and Turkish manuscripts with the purpose of sending them to Rudolph Haupt for resale. The Archive preserves the preliminary descriptions in which Kahle identified most of the works and provided some references to Brockelmann’s «Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur» or to the catalogue of the Berlin Library by W. Ahlwardt. A description of a first substantial part of this collection appeared in 1906, in a booklet entitled «Die arabischen Handschriften der Sammlung Haupt», edited by Martin Hartmann, now preserved in the Archive. In this regard, the series preserves various file cards relating to acquisition of the manuscripts. The catalogue of the Islamic manuscripts preserved in Turin was edited by R. Tottoli, M.L. Russo and M. Bernardini in 2011. In this database, an essential description of each item is provided. Another group of Islamic manuscripts is composed by the items concerning the Arabic shadow play theatre, which are not included in the above-mentioned catalogue. Samaritan and Hebrew manuscripts, although numerically less important, include some important items such as the "Memar Marqa" and fragments of the Cairo Geniza.