Samaritan materials in the Abraham Harkavy collection: Selected issues

Abraham Harkavy (1835-1919), one of the founding fathers of Jewish studies in the Russian Empire, gathered a large collection of Jewish manuscripts dating from the Middle Ages to the 19th century. Presently preserved in the V. Ver-nadsky National Library of Ukraine in Kiev, it includes, in addition to numerous Jewish Rabbanite and Karaite manuscripts, dozens of Samaritan manuscripts (both original and copies), as well as notes and remarks concerning these materials made by Harkavy himself and by Abraham Firkovich, a leader of Eastern European Karaites and manuscript collector. This paper aims at presenting this Samaritan collection, focusing on selected items, together with remarks and opinions of these two individuals that reveal details concerning the provenance of these items and throw light on some scholarly research issues in the second part of the 19th century.