É. Apor , I. Ormos (ed.): Goldziher Memorial Conference, June 21–22, 2000, Budapest.
ORMOS, István: The Correspondence of Ignaz Goldziher and Max Herz
ISTVÁN ORMOS den ewigen Humbug, der immer u. immer von neuen Werken aus alten geschöpft wird, umwerfen u. etwas frischen Geist soviel wie möglich Positives bieten.)" The question of this work recurs repeatedly. The work itself was finally published in 1907. 7 3 Of course there are quite a number of minor remarks in the letters. Perhaps one can be illustrated here to show that interesting items may occur in the most unexpected places of the Goldziher correspondence. In his letter dated 6 April 1901 Herz says that he has just received the last instalment of Max van Berchem's Corpus in which on p. 304 under No. 197 he is discussing a door as if it was original: "Van Berchem has sent me his last Corpus. I was sorry to notice that on p. 304 under No. 197 he talks about a door as if it was original. The door was made by a botcher under my own eyes. I want to inform him gently of this. I am totally unable to comprehend such a mistake by Van Berchem. (Van Berchem hat mir seinen letzten Corp. eingeschickt. Es that mir leid zu bemerken, daß er p. 304 - N" 197 von einer Thiire spricht als ob sie alt gewesen wäre. Die Thiire wurde unter meinen Augen von einem Pfuscher angefertigt. Ich will ihm davon gelinde Mitteilung machen. Ich kann einen solchen Irrtum von V. B. gar nicht fassen.)" 4 Now this seems to be the very door that has recently surfaced in the Täriq Ragab Museum in Kuwait as a replica of a Mamluk door from Sultan Barqüq's funerary mosque in the Northern Cemetery in Cairo. Professor Géza Fehérvári is preparing a detailed analysis of this door and is writing a monograph intending to put forward the view that the door is in fact original. It may be added in this connexion that among the donations Herz offered to the Museum of Applied Arts in Budapest was a bronze plate of 50 x 19 cm from the door of the mosque of Sultan Barqüq. Unhappily, the plate cannot be found at present, so it is impossible to say if it belonged to the same door or to another one. The whole story seems rather confused at present. The present writer regards it impossible that Herz Pasha would have simply mistaken an original Mamluk door for a false one. It is true that he was an architect and not a specialist in metals, yet he was a man of outstanding capabilities, who worked hard through all his life and was 7 3 Herz Miksa Bey, 'Az iszlám művészete [The Art of Islam]', in: A művészetek története a legrégibb időktől a XIX. század végéig [The History of Arts from the earliest periods until the end of the 19th century], Ed. Zsolt Beöthy, vol. 2, Budapest 1907, 108-262. The contract and Herz's letters to the publisher are extant among the documentation of the Lampel (Wodianer) Publishing House preserved in the Department of Manuscripts, Széchényi National Library, Budapest (shelf mark: Fond 4/57). The publishing house of Robert Lampel (Lampel Róbert) was acquired by Philipp Wodianer (Wodianer Fülöp) in 1874. Herz was in contact with his son and partner, Artur Wodianer. See Max van Berchem, Matériaux pour un corpus inscriptionum arabicarum. I. Egypte. (Mémoires publiés par les membres de la mission franqaise au Caire 19), Paris 1903, 304-305 (n° 197). This work was published in instalments and subsequently it came out in a single volume too. 180
