É. Apor , I. Ormos (ed.): Goldziher Memorial Conference, June 21–22, 2000, Budapest.
HOPKINS, Simon: The Language Studies of Ignaz Goldziher
THE LANGUAGE STUDIES OF IGNAZ GOLDZIHER 1897 he even declined to revise some of his deceased friend W. Robertson Smith's articles for Cheyne's Encyclopaedia Biblica "da mich der Islam vollends beansprucht"." 7 In 1900 he wrote to Hartmann that "mich nichts mehr in meiner Wissenschaft interessiert als die provinzielle & individuelle Ausprägung des Islam", and in 1906, having completed his edition of the Judaeo-Arabic Kitäb ma'áni al-nafs (below §5c), he declares his wish to devote the remainder of his life to Islam alone." 8 It was not, however, Goldziher's scholarly temperament alone that was responsible for the shift of emphasis. The beginning of the second period of his career coincided with the start of his miserably unhappy full-time employment, from ist January 1876, as secretary to the Neolog Israelite congregation of Pest, from which wretched position he found release only in 1905 when he received the salaried university appointment which by rights and by expectation he should have had some thirty years before." 9 The Hungarian Academy of Sciences elected Goldziher to its membership in 1870;"" the university, however, because of religious prejudice and petty factional squabbles, would not agree to grant him Habilitation. 17 1 In his secretarial post leisure for study was no longer available to him as it had been in the past, and his reading had consequently to be restricted and channelled into the direction of his main priorities, 12 2 those where he knew his major scholarly strength to lie. Thus we find him writing to Nöldeke in 1896 that he no longer has the leisure to read the large quantities of Persian which he once did, 1 2 ' and in 1910, apropos of the Neue Beiträge zur semitischen Sprachwissenschaft (the second chapter of which deals with loanwords into and out of Ethiopic). he states that force of circumstances had allowed him little opportunity to read Ethiopic since 1877. 12 4 [It was the same with Mandaic. I.O.I. 12 5 One may take the fate of Goldziher's Persian, Ethiopic and 11 6 Rightly pointed out by Conrad, Tgnaz Goldziher on Ernest Renan' 150. 11 7 Tagebuch 214-215; he did, however, undertake a few months later (ibid. 217 and cf. Simon, Letters 266) to annotate Robertson Smith's Kinship and Marriage in Early Arabia for its second edition (London 1903). 11 8 Hanisch, Briefwechsel 150-151. 11 9 Tagebuch 244-245; Simon, Letters 279. 12, 1 Tagebuch 88, 93; for his further progress in this institution see ibid. 137-138, 243-244. 12 1 Tagebuch 45 and cf. 182. For the issues involved here see Simon, Letters 39ff., 49-52; Conrad, 'Pilgrim from Pest' 125-127; Tgnaz Goldziher on Ernest Renan' 150 and 174 n. 86. 12 2 Tagebuch 92-93, 110. 12 3 Simon, Letters 213. In 1898, however, he found time to read Jaläl al-DTn al-Rúml (Hanisch, Briefwechsel 117). 12 4 Simon, Letters 344 referred to above n. 60. Goldziher had already mentioned the rustiness of his Ethiopic in a letter to Hartmann in 1894 (Hanisch, Briefwechsel 22). 12 5 [In an unpublished letter to Nöldeke dated 29.3.1916 Goldziher writes: "Aus dem Mandäischen bin ich seit langem hinausgekommen. 1876 habe ich Ihre Mand. Grammatik bald nach ihrem Erscheinen ernstlich studiert. Durch die bekannten, 30 Jahre währenden 107
