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

HOPKINS, Simon: The Language Studies of Ignaz Goldziher

SIMON HOPKINS Wetzstein and others that classical Arabic had never been really alive as a natural spoken tongue and owed its existence largely to the activity of learned grammarians. Goldziher's rejection of this theory may well be justified, but we may doubt if Palgrave's information lends him the support which he believed it did. Palgrave belonged to that tribe of educated adventurers, male and female, which were a characteristic feature of Victorian England; his travels, which indeed make very entertaining reading,

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8 were popular fare at a time of great public interest in things of the orient,

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9 appeared in quick succession in several editions and were translated into French and German. Palgrave was not, however, an observer of proven reliability

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3" and his statements on inflected spoken classical Arabic never rise above the vague, impressionistic generalities quoted above.

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3' In his acceptance of Palgrave's reports at face value, I do not think we need convict Goldziher of excessive gullibility. There is no reason, in principle, to deny the possibility of fully inflected classical Arabic having survived somewhere in the depths of inner Arabia. If Goldziher may have reasoned - an ancient Semitic language such as Neo-Aramaic can defy historical probability and survive in isolated pockets down to modem times, perhaps the ancient 'arabiyya too is still to be heard in some remote recesses of the peninsula? He may have been encouraged in such a thought by his familiarity with the work of J. G. Wetzstein, whose lectures on the language and customs of the bedouin he had attended in Berlin.

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2 Wetzstein, although himself not believing in the antiquity of the case-system of classical Arabic, had published, while Goldziher was a student in Germany, a pioneering study entitled 'Sprachliches aus den Zeltlagern der syrischen Wüste', ZDMG 22 (1868), 69-194. This article, which Goldziher quotes (p. 19), substantiated an important discovery already made by G.Wallin in 1851, viz. that in the bedouin dialects of the Syrian desert and Northern Arabia vestiges of the ancient tanwin were still very much alive. Since - Goldziher may have reasoned further - the Arabic spoken in urban centres such as Beirut and Damascus (with which he was personally familiar) had lost the old case-system almost entirely, whereas bedouin dialects (as Wetzstein 28 Goldziher, it may be noted, had an insatiable appetite for travel literature (Tagebuch 92, 110). 22

9 This was the time, inter alia, of Vámbéry's triumphant visit to London; see Conrad, JRAS 1990,243-244,255-256. 23

0 See Fück, Die arabischen Studien in Europa 198, n. 506. 23

1 On him in general see M. Allan, Palgrave of Arabia. The Life of William Gifford Palgrave 1826-1888. London 1972; B. Braude in: The Jewish Discovery of Islam. Studies in Honor of Bernard Lewis, ed. M. Kramer, Tel Aviv 1999, 77-93 - neither source mentions Palgrave's alleged linguistic discovery. 23

2 Tagebuch 37. Goldziher's notes taken at Wetzstein's lectures are preserved in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest. [

Sitten und Leben der Araber / nach Vorträgen des Dr. Wetzstein. 1868/9 Sommersemester. 37 leaves in 8°. Goldzihergyüjtemény MS no. 101.

1. O.] 134