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

HOPKINS, Simon: The Language Studies of Ignaz Goldziher

SIMON HOPKINS Goldziher's manuscript researches in European (and, shortly afterwards, in Middle Eastern) libraries proved very fruitful indeed, laying the basis for his first major publications. Principal among the fruits was a trilogy contributed to the Sitzungsberichte of the Vienna Academy (1871, 1872, 1873) under the title 'Beiträge zur Geschichte der Sprachgelchrsamkeit bei den Arabern' (Heller nos. 18, 25, 31 = GS 1 7, 91, 187).

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1 These three instalments deal respectively with (i) philological materials, e.g. on al-Firüzäbädi, in the Refa'iyya collection in Leipzig, (ii) literature on the lexicographer al-Jawhari, (iii) Ibn Färis."

1

4 Concurrently with this series he published in the same Sitzungsberichte (1871) a general appraisal of the literary activity of Suyüti (Heller no. 19 = GS 1 52, English translation in Muslim World 68 [1978] 79-99), by whose Muzhir his enthusiasm for this branch of Arabic literature had been so fired. The same period of activity also saw the appearance of 'Linguistisches aus der Litteratur der muhammedanischen Mystik', ZDMG 36 (1872), 764-785 = GS I 165. The title should not mislead; there is little in this article which is "linguistic" in the grammatical sense. Goldziher is here concerned, as usual, with cultural history; he deals, for example, with the esotericism of mystical literature, letter symbolism, and the polyglot talents conventionally attributed in mystical texts to the sacred heroes of antiquity. The rest of this first period of Goldziher's career was dominated by the Middle East study tour of 1873-4 and his book Der Mythos bei den Hebräern (1876). Two results of the study tour have already been mentioned in §5<d: his study in Egyptian colloquial Arabic, 'Jugend- und Strassenpoesie in Kairo', ZDMG 33 (1879), 608-630 = GS II 48, and his review (1881) of Spitta's Grammatik. The tour also provided a number of manuscript discoveries in the libraries of Syria and Egypt, especially the library of Mustafa Sibä'i Beg in Damascus;

2'

5 two of his finds have been recorded above nn.138, 214. This period of Goldziher's career closes with On the History of Grammar among the Arabs (1878), to which we shall now turn. 21

3 Tagebuch, 46. The term "Sprachgelehrsamkeit'' recurs as the title of chapter V. B. in Muhammedanische Studien I, Halle 1889, 208-216. 21

4 Goldziher had discovered a copy of Ibn Färis's Fiqh al-luga [= al-Sähibi

] in the library of the sheikh Maydäni in Damascus; see Oriental Diary 124, 126; Tagebuch 58 and his letter to Fleischer in ZDMG 27 (1874), 161-168. 21

5 Oriental Diary 114ff.

; Tagebuch 58; Hanisch, Briefwechsel 18, 21-2. For Goldziher's book purchases in the Middle East, see above n. 102. 128