Historical Studies

Over the past decade or two, the formation, provenance, and history of manuscript collections around the world has become a focus of scholarly attention. This trend has prompted numerous studies of the Jerusalem-born cosmopolitan Abraham Shalom Yahuda (1877–1951), arguably the most important seller of Islamic manuscripts to Western collectors and libraries during the third and fourth decades of the twentieth century. One area that has not been studied is Yahuda's assistants, whom he employed over the years to write descriptions of the manuscripts in his possession. No attempt has been made to identify the individuals who worked for Yahuda at different times or to distinguish between the various languages (Arabic, German, English, French) and hands in which the extant catalog slips were written. It appears that Yahuda employed a number of Egyptian and German scholars over the years, some of whom worked for him longer than others. Among them were Hans Kindermann (1902–1979) and Hans Ludwig Gottschalk (1904–1981). The surviving evidence of their respective work for Yahuda is discussed in this study, as is the unsuccessful attempt of Hedwig Klein (1911–1942) to enter into Yahuda’s service in 1938.