É. Apor , I. Ormos (ed.): Goldziher Memorial Conference, June 21–22, 2000, Budapest.
HOPKINS, Simon: The Language Studies of Ignaz Goldziher
SIMON HOPKINS from the Leipzig manuscript of the travel book of lAbd al-Ghani al-Näbulusi (16411731), Kitäb al-haqiqa wa-l-majäz fi rihlat biläd al-säm wa-misr wa-l-hijäz. The first mentions, apropos of the name Abü HanTfa, that in Iraq hanifa has the meaning "inkwell"; the second treats at length the expression W j aba used in the Hijäz when serving coffee. 15 4 In comparison with many other European Arabists Goldziher was rather well placed to pursue dialect research, for his familiarity with the language was acquired not only through the written word, but also by living contact with the speakers. Goldziher knew Arabic through the ear as well as through the eye. In addition to his ability to write in Arabic,' 5 5 he also possessed a quality which many great philologists lack, viz. a ready facility in speech. It is a well known paradox that philological scholarship has no necessary connection with the practical ability to converse in foreign tongues. Many great scholars have never spoken, or indeed even heard, the languages of their speciality; conversely, many of those with the gift of ready speech in several languages have never contributed anything of scholarly value to the study of any of them. Goldziher did not conform to this pattern; he was not only a very great scholar who added significantly to the sum of human knowledge, but also a highly accomplished practical linguist. Goldziher's polyglot facility is revealed by an amusing anecdote recorded in the Tagebuch p. 185. During a train journey in from Basel to Fribourg in 1894, a lady from Geneva had become curious about her fellow-traveller, unable to decide of what origin he might be. Her supposition was that Goldziher, to judge from his features and gestures, could not be a European. This seemed to tally well with the unidentified oriental tongue (Arabic) in which she had heard him conversing with a priest on the same train. 15 6 Arabic or Turkish, she concluded, must be his mother 15 3 MS Goldziher-gyüjtemény 99, kindly brought to my attention by I. Onnos. These pages were in all probability written in the late 1870s - early 1880s - there are mentioned de Goeje's Muqaddasi edition of 1877 and the Romance of cAntar, which Goldziher, having acquired in Egypt (Heller nos. 30a, 40a) (re-)read at this period (Tagebuch 92; Hanisch, Briefwechsel 377). The Roman numeral II. indicates that the piece was planned as part of some larger work; this may possibly have been a revised German edition of his Hungarian essay 'Muhammedán utazókról' [On Mohammedan travellers]. Földrajzi Közlemények 3 (1875), 91-102, 148-170 = Az arabok I 107 (synopsis in Heller no. 53). 15 4 This had already been mentioned by G. Flügel in his conspectus of the work in ZDMG 16 (1862), 688-689. On the word (< Turkish caba "gratis") see Ismá'Tl b. 'All al-Akwa', AlamOäl al-yamäniyya I, Beirut - San'ä' 1984, 364; it is known in a number of Arabic dialects, not only those of the Arabian peninsula. 15 5 Some of Goldziher's Arabic correspondence is mentioned in Tagebuch 278, 279; cf. also Yahuda, Der Jude 8 (1924), 582. 15 6 [While the priest "in maghrebinischem Arabisch conversirte", Goldziher probably answered him in "Syro-Egyptian". He writes of a similar situation in an unpublished letter to Nöldeke dated 3.12.1914: "Letzten Freitag hatte ich den Besuch zweier Araber aus Marokko, die in Begleitung Schabringers (Dolmetsch der deutschen Gesandschaft in 116
