É. Apor , I. Ormos (ed.): Goldziher Memorial Conference, June 21–22, 2000, Budapest.
DÉVÉNYI, Kinga: Information Exchange Before the Internet: On law aqsama alá lláh la-abarrahu in Goldziher's Correspondence
INFORMATION EXCHANGE BEFORE THE INTERNET Najirami's Aymän al- carabfi l-jähiliyya a collated copy of which he acquired in the winter of 1899. 3 0 Evidence to date Goldziher's manuscripts is supplied by the papers he used to write on, since it was his custom to re-use any paper with at least one blank page. Accordingly, it can be established with great certainty that he started to work on the edition of Najirami's Aymän immediately after its acquisition, since the papers he wrote on date from the years 1898 and 1899. He continued to work on it, as it is evidenced by another piece of paper, this time already from 1907 which bears the heading: "Nagirami Ajmän " (in Goldziher's transcription). Parallel to the edition of the MS, Goldziher started to conduct research on the topic of oaths and he wrote an article in German on the back of papers dating from 1898-1900. The twelve folios, which in their present state end quite abruptly, partially overlap with Goldziher's 1909 article for the Melanges Hartwig Derenbourg. Taking into consideration the way Goldziher worked, and also the highly defective nature of the MS in question, it is not surprising that this edition of his remained unpublished. ' 1 Though, incidentally, van Berchem asked information about the same hadith , Goldziher's real interest was naturally - aroused by his own research. Conclusion As we have seen, al-BibläwI gives in his letter an explanation on the hadith: law aqsama calä lläh la-abarrahu. The article where Goldziher seems to have made use of some of the material he had been collecting for his intended publication on oaths is: 3 0 Cf. Goldziher (1909), 226, fn. 4. The work was eventually published on the basis of two extant MSS by Muhibb al-DIn al-Khatib in Cairo (al-Maktaba al-Salafiyya, 1343 [1924/25], 2nd edition 1382 [1962].) ' As Goitein (1948), 433, writes: "We learn [from the letters] that even the Vorlesungen, that classic of Islamic studies, was compiled and eventually published only at the repeated requests of friends in different countries. ... Although exceptionally fertile, he let his books and even articles mature slowly and put them aside several times, before preparing them for publication. ... he did not cease to be "fascinated" by [a topic] and continued to gather material about it". Cf. also Goldziher (1909), 226, fn. 4. where he states that "l'éditeur devra beaucoup corriger le texte". It seems also plausible that by the 1910s he had already abandoned the idea of publishing an edition of Najirami's Aymän. He even seems to have contemplated sending the partially edited MS to Dr. Walter Gottschalk who at that time showed interest in editing the MS. See W. Gottschalk's letters to Goldziher (Goldziher's correspondence, LH AS, Box No. 13). To this end, Goldziher put the MS as edited by him into an envelope addressed to W. Gottschalk, but finally did not send it, perhaps on account of World War I. [On this subject see also footnote 137 in the article by Simon Hopkins in the present volume. Ed.] 31
