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

HOPKINS, Simon: The Language Studies of Ignaz Goldziher

THE LANGUAGE STUDIES OF IGNAZ GOLDZIHER 7. On the History of Grammar among the Arabs (1878) The work in which Goldziher speaks more than in any other about the Arabic language, its history and its dialects is A nyelvtudomány történetéről az araboknál. Irodalomtörténeti kísérlet (Budapest 1878) [= Nyelvtudományi Közlemények 14 (1878), 309-375], reprinted (with an errata list by K.. Dévényi) in Az arabok I, 221290. For over a hundred years this work was inaccessible to readers ignorant of Hungarian. A French synopsis appeared in 1927 in Heller's Bibliographie no. 71 and the difficulty has now been entirely removed by the appearance of an English translation of Goldziher's youthful publication, very helpfully annotated and provided with an appendix of Arabic texts: I. Goldziher, On the History of Grammar among the Arabs. An Essay in Literary History, trans, and ed. K. Dévényi & T. Iványi (Amsterdam - Philadelphia 1994). Thanks to this translation the world at large may now enjoy access to one of Goldziher's least read works. One can only speculate why the author himself did not in this case follow his own practice

2"' and prepare a revised German version of this study for the benefit of readers unfamiliar with Hungarian. Two reasons may be suggested. Firstly, the habit of writing a preliminary version in Hungarian, followed thereafter by a revised German text aimed at an international readership, is characteristic of the later rather than the younger Goldziher. There are other substantial Hungarian works from the 1870s for which also he never provided a German version, in particular his studies on nationality among the Arabs (1873),

21

7 Muslim travellers (1875),

2,

8 the original home of the Semites (1875)

2'

9 and the Arabs of Spain (1877).

22

0 It may well be that Goldziher did not consider his work On the History of Grammar among the Arabs of sufficient merit to warrant publication in German for a wider audience. He did, however, draw material from it for his German writings when the opportunity arose. For example, the passage (pp. 22-23) identifying the modern (Egyptian) demonstrative pronoun deh and dih (which Goldziher compares to Hebrew zeh) with that occurring in the old sentences »j j^ ^j® (Bukhäri) and »j bü »

j V) (Ru'ba b. al-'Ajjäj) is repeated on p. 516 of the review of Spitta's Grammatik (with the transcription improved to di)\ the note (p. 23) on möye (muweyhe), the diminutive of mä' "water", and its early occurrence as in Muslim's Sahih likewise reappears on the same page of the said review, with the interesting addition that in some versions of the tradition the offending colloquial <iy has been replaced by the chaster Further, the list of appellations for modern colloquial Arabic, lugat 21

6 Cf. on this Conrad. 'Pilgrim from Pest' 110-111, 146; 'Ignaz Goldziher on Ernest Renan' 164-165. 21

7 But for the link with Muhammedanische Studien see above n. 114. 21

8 Above n. 153. 21

9 Short synopsis in Heller no. 58. 22,

1 = A: arabok 1 141 with resumé in Heller no. 65a; English translation by DeSomogyi in GS I 370-423, reprinted from Moslem World 53 (1963), 54 (1964). 129