Paul Kahle and His Catalog of the Arabic Manuscripts of the Bodleian Library, Oxford

Although Paul Kahle’s involuntary exile from Germany during the Second World War caused him considerable economic hardship, it also opened up entirely new scholarly horizons for him, as his principal occupation during the years 1939 through 1947 was the preparation of a catalog of the manuscripts of the Chester Beatty Collection and a catalog of the Arabic manuscripts of the Bodleian Library that had been acquired since 1835. Neither catalog was ever published. This paper analyzes Kahle’s relationship with the Bodleian Library in this period and his unpublished catalog of the library’s Arabic manuscripts.