Catalogue of the Arabic, Persian, and Turkish Manuscripts of the Yahuda Collection of the National Library of Israel Volume 1

Abraham Shalom Yehuda (1877–1951), who collected not only the manuscripts described in this catalogue but also many more which are now preserved in other institutions (including Princeton University Library), was a versatile and industrious scholar, expert in Hebrew and Arabic, though not in Persian and Turkish. It would appear that although he embraced the cause of moderate Zionism, Yehuda had a genuine respect for Islam and its culture and a desire to see a continuing intellectual symbiosis. The account of Yehuda and his work by the editor of this volume is followed by the compiler’s introduction which is unusual in respect of the emphasis given to questions of cataloguing methodology. This contains elements of a potted history of Arabic manuscript cataloguing by orientalists, beginning with Ahlwardt, author of the enormous and epoch-making catalogue of the Prussian State Library (today’s Staatsbibliothek Preussischer Kulturbesitz) in Berlin, and takes in some of the major developments of the past century and a half. Wust also explains in some detail the rationale and procedure followed in his own work. He emphasises the richness of the collection and the variety of texts it contains, which reflect the wide-ranging interests of the man behind it.....