É. Apor , I. Ormos (ed.): Goldziher Memorial Conference, June 21–22, 2000, Budapest.

HOPKINS, Simon: The Language Studies of Ignaz Goldziher

SIMON HOPKINS found the learned company in the home of the Professor of Anatomy so congenially stimulating that he soon became "der redende Mittelpunkt der Gesellschaft".

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0 It is worth collecting a few of Goldziher's own remarks on his practical linguistic gifts in oriental tongues. If we except his teenage acquaintance with Molla Ishak, Vámbéry's house-servant, Goldziher's first significant social contact with orientals seems to have been during a visit to Vienna with Vámbéry in 1873, concerning which, he says, that "selbst mit dem Parlieren gieng es ganz geläufig"."'

1 During his Middle Eastern study tour of 1873-4 he had no real difficulty in conversing with the natives, be it in Arabic or in Turkish. It is Turkish that is first mentioned in his Keleti Naplóm. At the beginning of the Oriental Diary we read that Goldziher, during the compulsory period of quarantine, befriended a group of Rumelian pilgrims with whom he conversed in Turkish "and thus refreshed memories from the earliest times of my Oriental studies" (p. 89). Communication continued in this language with his friends the hajjis from Rumelia (pp. 92, 104) and with others too (pp. 106, 116), and he even entertained his interlocutors with translation into Turkish verse,"'- but Goldziher confesses that the opportunity to speak German a little later released him from a "tongue-tiedness of several weeks" (p. 102). With Arabic, on the other hand, i.e. classical Arabic, there is no hint at all of being tongue-tied even for a moment. In his History of Grammar among the Arabs (1878) he states that "when 1 arrived in Syria in September 1873, I could express my thoughts fluently only in literary Arabic" (p. 27), and years later, describing this experience in his Tagebuch (begun in 1890), he writes with similar formulation that "als ich in Beirut landete, machte ich die überraschende Entdeckung, dass ich ganz fertig arabisch sprechen konnte" (p. 56). These statements made from memory long after his visit to the east receive full corroboration from the record of the Oriental Diary made at the time itself. Goldziher's classical Arabic conversations began even before landing on Arabic-speaking territory. With one of his aforementioned Turkish-speaking Rumelian fellow-travellers he found it more convenient to communicate in Arabic (pp. 89-90) and on board ship bound for Beirut he conversed at length in that language with his friend Muhammad al-Dhahabi (pp. 104-105), for whom he also acted as interpreter in dealings with the other passengers (p. 106). After arrival, he speaks in classical Arabic with the missionary and Bible translator C. van Dyck (p. 109), with Archbishop Makarius in Damascus,

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3 who is greatly impressed with Goldziher's knowledge of the sources (p. 118), and is soon feted by his Arabic-speaking acquaintances as a fasih (p. 109). His expertise extends to poetry as well; he not only declaimed by heart venerated classics such as the mu'allaqa of 16

0 Tagebuch 255. One supposes that conversation on this occasion took place, at least on the Scottish side, in English. 19

1 Tagebuch 55. 16

2 Goldziher's Turkish rhymes on p. 106 of Patai's publication are unfortunately garbled. 16

3 History of Grammar 26; Tagebuch 60. 1 18