Apor Éva (szerk.): Magyar Tudományos Akadémia Könyvtára Keleti Gyűjtemény.
To the Reader
To the Reader O ne of the finest characteristics of Hungarian national development is the nation's openness towards various cultures of the world. The broad intellectual horizon of our scholars encompassing the culture of the whole world has been one of the motive forces of Hungarian scholarship. Eloquent testimony to this versatile interest is our scholars' attraction to Oriental research. Scientific interest was attracted to the East by the prehistory of the Hungarians, their thousand-year-long wandering before the final settlement and the intricate web of Oriental relations established in the course of these peregrinations. The scholars' curiosity was further intensified by the coexistence for nearly 150 years of Ottomans and Hungarians as part of the Ottoman Empire in the 16th-17th centuries and by the presence of Islamic culture in Hungary. Again, their desire to get to know the Orient was further enhanced by being neighbours of the Islamic culture of the Balkans for many centuries up to the present, and by the fact that from the 11 th to the 20th century, even newer ethnic groups of Oriental origin arrived to settle in the territory of the Hungarian state. The prominent Hungarian figures of Oriental research - Alexander Csorna de Kőrös, Ármin Vámbéry (the "Dervish"), Dávid Kaufmann, Ignác Goldziher, Aurél Stein - have an acknowledged place in the Oriental scholarship of the world. The Hungarian Academy of Sciences has been the home of the Oriental Collection since 1950, and the scholars and institutes of the Academy continue to profess it their duty to research the past and present of Oriental cultures. Even more so, as our generation just as our predecessors is driven by the desire of openness to the world. You will understand why the president of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences has deemed it so important to have this booklet published for the Budapest meeting of the World Congress of Oriental Studies. May 1997, Budapest Ferenc Glatz President Hungarian Academy of Sciences
