É. Apor , I. Ormos (ed.): Goldziher Memorial Conference, June 21–22, 2000, Budapest.
HOPKINS, Simon: The Language Studies of Ignaz Goldziher
SIMON HOPKINS wrote a considerable amount on narrower philological topics, particularly during the early period of his career. The work of Goldziher on philological matters has not become part and parcel of the Goldziher legacy to the study of Arabic and Islam. I think one may suggest three main reasons for this. Firstly, in his later career, after the 1870s, he paid relatively little attention to questions of linguistic import and posterity has been concerned rather with his massive contributions to other aspects of the literature, theology and culture of Islam. In his celebrated major works - Die Zähiriten (1884), Muhammedanische Studien (1889-1890), Le livre de Mohammed ibn Toumert (1903), Vorlesungen über den Islam (1910), Streitschrift des Gazäll gegen die Bätinijja Sekte (1916) and Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung (1920) he addressed himself but little to questions of language. Secondly, some of Goldziher's utterances on linguistic subjects are scattered in various places where one might not think of looking for them. For example, Der Mythos bei den Hebräern und seine geschichtliche Entwickelung (1876) contains much fascinating linguistic matter, mainly of an etymological kind. It was Goldziher's opinion (p. 60) that mythology must be studied in the light of /1 / psychology, 111 history, and If linguistic science ("Sprachwissenschaft"). Accordingly, we find in his book a rather large number of etymological observations aimed at elucidating and reconstructing the thought-categories of the Semitic peoples in general and of the ancient Hebrews in particular. Among these one could point, for example, to a richly documented excursus (pp. 232-234) on paronomastic and rhyming doublets adduced in explanation of the Islamic häbll wa-qäbtl "Cain and Abel", or the discussion with which the book ends (pp. 393ff.) on the aetiological power of folk-etymology to generate myth. Thirdly, the most comprehensive statement of Goldziher's views on the Arabic language, its development and its dialects was made in Hungarian in his A nyelvtudomány történetéről az araboknál. Irodalomtörténeti kísérlet (1878), a work which remained unread by most scholars of Arabic until it was published in English as On the History of Grammar among the Arabs. An Essay in Literary History, by K. Dévényi & T. Iványi in 1994. The writings of Ignaz Goldziher on language subjects should not be overlooked in the general assessment of his huge contribution to the study of Arabic, Islam and Semitic civilization. They add an important philological dimension to the picture of a very great scholar, a philological dimension which was not merely incidental to the rest of his oeuvre, but an integral part of it. He constantly applied the philological method of textual study which already as a teenager he had so come to appreciate in the Talmud classes of Samuel Löw Brill: "Brill hatte die richtige Methode, das Blatt, auf welchem unser Studium wochenlang haftete, als Mittelpunkt zu betrachten, um vom selben aus immer wieder in dasselbe zurückkehrend, weite Gebiete zu 136
