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The Near East study tour diary of Ignaz Goldziher*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 March 2011

Lawrence I. Conrad
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Extract

Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921) is generally acknowledged as the scholar whose work to a great extent laid the modern foundations for the study in the West of the history, culture, and religion of Islam. Issues of considerable significance are thus posed by questions concerning the individual responsible for this seminal scholarship, including, for example, such matters as his personal background, the influences that directed the course of his intellectual development, and the perspective from which he viewed the discipline he did so much to create and to which he dedicated his life. Fortunately, much material relevant to the investigation of these topics survives. In addition to Goldziher's vast scholarly corpus, important collections of his correspondence with colleagues and friends are extant, primarily in Budapest. The material published to date includes Goldziher's letters to Immanuel Löw (1854–1944), a discussion – with important extracts – of those to S. A. Poznanski (1864–1921), the letters of Solomon Schechter (1849–1915), Max Nordau (1849–1923) and Christiaan Snouck Hurgronje (1857–1936) to Goldziher, and a selection from the correspondence between Theodor Nöldeke (1836–1930) and Goldziher. His 1890 memoirs and subsequent diary have also been published, and Raphael Patai has now brought to light another important document, Goldziher's Keleti Naplóm (“My Oriental Diary”), in English translation with a detailed introduction offering a psychological portrait of the author.

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Articles
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Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society , Volume 122 , Issue 1 , January 1990 , pp. 105 - 126
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Asiatic Society 1990

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References

1 The most useful introduction to Goldziher is Simon's, Robert recent and important work, Ignác Goldziher: His Life and Scholarship as Reflected in His Works and Correspondence (Leiden and Budapest, 1986), pp. 11–156Google Scholar. Also important are Fück, Johann, Die arabischen Studien in Europa bis in den Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts (Leipzig, 1955), pp. 226–31Google Scholar; Waardenburg, Jean-Jacques, L'Islam dans le miroir de t l'occident, 3rd revised edition (Paris and The Hague, 1962)Google Scholar, index; and the personal accounts listed by Alexander Scheiber in his edition of Goldziher's, Tagebuch (Leiden, 1978), pp. 329–30Google Scholar, in particular Németh, Julius “Goldzihers Jugend”, Acta orientalia, 1 (1950–1951), pp. 7–25Google Scholar. The scanty attention paid to Goldziher in the critique of Orientalism, despite his well-known importance, is most striking in Said, Edward, Orientalism (London, 1978)Google Scholar. This is a serious problem, since, to cite but one example, Goldziher's career flatly contradicts one of Said's most important conclusions – that in Orientalism there was, so far as the conceptualization of “Islam” and “the Orient” was concerned, nothing new after the theories of Renan. Goldziher, however, sharply attacked Renan and repeatedly sought to disprove his Aryan/Semitic formulations. See Lawrence I. Conrad, “The pilgrim from Pest: Goldziher's study trip to the Near East (1873–74)”, in Golden Roads: Migration, Pilgrimage and Travel in Medieval and Modern Islam, edited by Ian Richard Netton, forthcoming.

2 For a bibliography, see Heller, Bernard, Bibliographie des oeuvres de Ignace Goldziher (Paris, 1927)Google Scholar, listing 592 items. Alexander Scheiber on several occasions added items missed by Heller and new printings, editions, and translations of his works (for a total of 807 items); see his “A supplementary bibliography of the literary work of Ignace Goldziher”, in Ignace Goldziher Memorial Volume, I, edited by Löwinger, Samuel and de Somogyi, Joseph (Budapest, 1948), pp. 419–29Google Scholar; idem, “Addenda to the Bibliography of Goldziher”, Ignace Goldziher Memorial Volume, II, edited by Joseph de Somogyi (Jerusalem, 1958), pp. 209–14; also Scheiber's additions in his edition of Goldziher's, Tagebuch, pp. 331–4Google Scholar. Goldziher's, Gesammelte Schriften, edited by de Somogyi, Joseph (Hildesheim, 1967–1973)Google Scholar, contains most of his scholarly articles in major European languages. Nevertheless, much of importance has been left out, including all of his book reviews (often full of valuable insights), essays that Somogyi apparently considered more popular or of less specifically Islamic orientation, and everything Goldziher wrote in Hungarian.

3 Of Goldziher's correspondence the archives of the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest hold the most important collection: in excess of 13,000 items involving more than 1,650 individuals, some of it transcribed but mostly still unpublished. On this collection, see “Die Goldziher-Sammlung der Ungarischen Akademie der Wissenschaften”, Ungarische Jahrbücher, 13 (1933), pp. 371–2Google Scholar; de Somogyi, Joseph, “A collection of the literary remains of Ignace Goldziher”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1935), pp. 149–54Google Scholar; Simon, , Ignác Goldziher, pp. 159–61Google Scholar. Other less voluminous but also important collections of letters are preserved in Jerusalem, Leiden, and Tübingen.

4 Scheiber, Alexander, “Goldziher Ignác levelei Löw Immánuelhez”, Új élet, 2, no. 50 (12 12 1946)Google Scholar, publishing five letters written between 1881 and 1917.

5 Goitein, S. D., “Goldziher as seen through his letters”, Goldziher Memorial Volume, I, 3–23 (Hebrew Section)Google Scholar.

6 Scheiber, Alexander, “Letters of Solomon Schechter to William Bacher and Ignace Goldziher”, Hebrew Union College Annual, 33 (1962), pp. 271–5Google Scholar. The material covered here consists of three letters written in 1904–5 concerning a proposed lecture trip for Goldziher to the United States and a 1908 telegram announcing Schechter's imminent arrival in Budapest.

7 Scheiber, Alexander, “Max Nordau's letters to Ignace Goldziher”, Jewish Social Studies, 18 (1956), pp. 199–207Google Scholar. This article includes seven letters written by Nordau between 1878 and 1920.

8 van Koningsveld, P. Sj., Scholarship and Friendship in Early Islamwissenschaft: The Letters of C. Snouck Hurgronje to I. Goldziher (Leiden, 1985)Google Scholar. This important collection contains 469 letters by Snouck to Goldziher, as well as 19 letters from other members of his family to the Goldzihers.

9 Simon, , Ignác Goldziher, pp. 159–447Google Scholar. Of the more than 500 extant letters exchanged between the two scholars, this volume contains 89 (39 by Goldziher and 50 by Nöldeke) writtenbetween 1881 and 1921.

10 I.e. Scheiber's edition of the Tagebuch.

11 Oriental Diary, pp. 128–9.

12 Ibid., pp. 98–101.

13 Ibid., pp. 108–11.

14 Ibid., pp. 132–8.

15 Ibid., pp. 144–53.

16 One might also query Patai's assessment of Goldziher's personality, but this falls beyond the scope of present concerns. See my “The dervish's disciple: on the intellectual milieu and perspectives of the young Ignaz Goldziher”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1990/2), forthcoming.

17 See, for example, Oriental Diary, pp. 98, 117, 119.

18 Ibid., p. 108.

19 Keleti Naplóm, pp. 11–12 (emphasis added). Cf. Oriental Diary, p. 93.

20 Oriental Diary, p. 84.

21 Ibid., p. 119.

22 See Goldziher's, article on this experience in the Pester Lloyd, 1873, no. 234Google Scholar.

23 Oriental Diary, p. 84.

24 Ibid., p. 88. The two were married on 21 May 1878 (Tagebuch, p. 90).

25 Oriental Diary, p. 93.

26 Ibid., pp. 83–4, 91, 95, 97, 117, 121, 137.

27 See my “The dervish's disciple”, forthcoming.

28 Concerning these events, see Tagebuch, pp. 69, 70, 76.

29 Oriental Diary, pp. 26, 28.

30 See de Somogyi, Joseph, “My reminiscences of Ignace Goldziher”, Muslim World, 51 (1961), pp. 12–13CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

31 See Tagebuch, p. 15; Oriental Diary, p. 137.

32 Tagebuch, p. 72.

33 That the Notizbuch was not simply another name for the Oriental Diary is demonstrated by the fact that for Goldziher's first 11 days at al-Azhar, a period covered by the Oriental Diary, one finds in the Tagebuch very detailed information not mentioned in the Oriental Diary. Some of this, such as the conversations with al-'Abbāsī and al-Ashmūnī, could be recollection from memory; but other material proves that a detailed document other than the Oriental Diary must have been at Goldziher's side when he later wrote of his Cairo experiences. For example, nowhere in the Oriental Diary will one find the text of his letter of admission to al-Azhar, yet the document is quoted in full in the Tagebuch (pp. 69–70). The Oriental Diary also contains nothing of the detailed statistical data on al-Azhar which Goldziher uses in several later publications. See his Jelentés a M. T. Akadémia Könyvtára számára keletrö hozott könyvekröl tekintettel a nyomdaviszonyokra keleten (Budapest, 1874), p. 22Google Scholar; “Universitäts-Moschee el-Azhar”, in Ebers, Georg, Aegypten in Bild und Wort (Stuttgart and Leipzig, 1879–1880), II, 83, 85, 88Google Scholar; Az Iszlám. Tanulmányok a muhammedán vallás története köréböl (Budapest, 1881), pp. 309–10, 312, 315–17Google Scholar.

34 Oriental Diary, pp. 28, 61.

35 Tagebuch, pp. 47, 48, 66, 77.

36 “Universitäts-Moschee el-Azhar”, pp. 71–88. Cf. also I, vi, where Ebers again acknowledges Goldziher's contribution.

37 Az Iszlám, pp. 299–340.

38 Tagebuch, p. 76.

39 Ibid., p. 107.

40 Oriental Diary, p. 32.

41 See the exposition on this very point in his Der Mythos bei den Hebräern (Leipzig, 1876), p. 113Google Scholar. Goldziher makes several references to his work on this book during his travels in the Near East. See Oriental Diary, p. 121; Tagebuch, p. 74.

42 Keleti Naplóm, pp. 30–1.

43 On the celebration of laylāapos; al-barā'a at the time of Goldziher's study trip, see Hurgronje, C. Snouck, Mekka in the Latter Part of the 19th Century, translated by Monahan, J. H. (Leiden, 1931), p. 61Google Scholar; Littmann, Enno, “Über die Ehrennamen und Neubenennungen der islamischen Monate”, Der Islam, 8 (1918), pp. 230, 233CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Keleti Naplóm, p. 39: “ein geistreiche Aperçu über das Wort Karsûni (= Qurashī) betrachte ich als Gewinn dieser Stunde”.

45 See Mingana, A., “Garshuni or Karshuni?”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (1928), pp. 891–3Google Scholar.

46 al-Bustānī, Buṭrus, Muḥīṭ al-muḥīṭ (Beirut, 1286/1870), II, 1806 b:15–16Google Scholar.

47 See Goldziher's, “Kirándulás Heliopolis felá”, Pesti Napló, 281 (5 12 1873), p. 1, col. 2Google Scholar, an article written by Goldziher in Damascus on 14 November. Cf. also Tagebuch, p. 56.

48 See al-Balādhurī, Ansāb al-ashrāf, Süleymaniye Kütüphanesi (Istanbul), Ms. Reisülküttap no. 598, fol. 500r; al-Maydānī, , Majma' al-amthāl, edited by al-Ḥamīd, Muḥammad Muḥyī l-Dīn 'Abd (Cairo, 1375/1955), I, 172, no. 908Google Scholar; al-Bak'rī, Abū 'Ubayd, Faṣl al-maqāl fī sharḥ kitāb al-amthāl, edited by 'Abbās, Iḥsān and 'Ābidīn, 'Abd al-Majīd (Beirut, 1391/1971), p. 392, no. 170Google Scholar; al-Barr, Ibn 'Abd, Bahjat al-majālis, edited by al-Khawlī, Muḥammad Murṣī (Cairo, n.d.), I, 289–94Google Scholar; Littmann, Enno, Arabic Proverbs (Cairo, 1913), pp. 33–4Google Scholar; Goitein, S. D. F., Jemenica. Sprichworter und Redensarten aus Zentral-Jemen (Leiden, 1934), p. 81, no. 536Google Scholar.

49 See Goldziher, Ignaz, “Beiträge zur Literaturgeschichte der Schī'a und der sunnitischen Polemik”, Sitzungsberichte der Philosophisch-historischen Classe der Kaiserlichen Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Wien, 78 (1874), pp. 442, 453 n. 3Google Scholar; = Gesammelte Schriften, I, 264, 275 n. 3. The work has since been printed several times. See GAL, II, 388; SII, 527.

50 Cf. Oriental Diary, p. 125.

51 For the poem, see Shaddād, 'Antara ibn, Diwan, edited by al-'Inānī, Muḥammad (Cairo, a.h. 1329), pp. 248–50Google Scholar.

52 See, for example, Ḥanbal, Aḥmad ibn, Musnad (Cairo, a.h. 1311), III, 435: 26–7Google Scholar.

53 See, for example, Oriental Diary, p. 136: Palestine is a land “where one cannot take two steps without running into a so-called sacred site to which the legend ties its swindle”. It is worth noting in this context that the process of “discovering” new Stations along the Via Dolorosa had not yet brought them to the current total of 14 by the time of Goldziher's visit.

54 See his “Das Mahmal”, Pester Lloyd, 23 August 1874, the “Feuilleton” column.

55 Al-'Āmidī, , Kitāb al-muwāzana bayna Abī Tammām wa-l-Buḥturī (Istanbul, a.h. 1287)Google Scholar. See Goldziher, Ignaz, “Alte und neue Poesie im Urtheile der arabischen Kritiker”, in his Abhandlungen zur arabischen Philologie (Leiden, 1896–1899), I, 124–5Google Scholar.

58 SeeJomier, Jacques, Le Mahmal et la caravane égyptienne des pèlerins de la Mecque (XIIIe–XXe siècles) (cairo, 1953), pp. 19, 34, 56, 96Google Scholar.

57 SeeLane, Edward William, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians (London, 1860), pp. 439–4O, 483Google Scholar.

58 “Das Mahmal”, his feuilleton in the Pester Lloyd for 23 August 1874.

59 GAL, II, 388; SII, 527.

60 Jelentás, pp. 24–5. On the Hazz al-quḥūf, cf. Kern, F., “Neuere ägyptische Humoristen und Satiriker”, Mitteilungen des Seminars für orientalische Sprachen, 9 (1906), pp. 37–42Google Scholar. Humphreys, R. Stephen, Islamic History: A framework for Inquiry (Minneapolis, 1988), p. 280Google Scholar.

61 See his “Universitäts-Moschee el-Azhar”, p. 85; Az Iszlám, p. 313; Tagebuch, p. 69.

62 See al-Jabartī, , 'Ajā'ib al-āthār fī l-tarājim wa-l-akhbār (Bulaq, a.h. 1297), IV, 233:13–15Google Scholar; and hence Dunne, J. Heyworth, An Introduction to the History of Education in Modern Egypt (London, 1938), pp. 399–400Google Scholar; Taymūr, Aḥmad, Tarājim a'yān al-qarn al-thālith 'ashar wa-awā'il al-rābī' 'ashar (Cairo, n.d.), p. 67Google Scholar.

63 On al-'Abbāsī, see Mubārak, 'Alī Pāshā, Al-Khiṭat al-tawfīqīya al-jadīda (Bulaq, a.h. 1304–1306), XVII, 12–13Google Scholar; Taymūr, , Tarājim, pp. 67–80Google Scholar; al-Khāliq, Muḥammad 'Abd, “Al-Shaykh Muḥammad al-'Abbāsī al-Mahdī”, in Zaydān, Jurjī, Tarājim mashāhīr al-sharq fī l-qarn al-tāst' 'ashar (Cairo, 1910–1911), II, 210–15Google Scholar; Sarkīs, Yūsuf Ilyān, Mu'jam al-maṭbū'āt al-'arabīya wa-l-mi' arraba (Cairo, 1346/1928), p. 181Google Scholar; Heyworth-Dunne, , Education in Modern Egypt, pp. 399–402Google Scholar; Marsot, Afaf Lutfi al-Sayyid, “The beginnings of modernization among the Rectors of al-Azhar, 1798–1879”, in Beginnings of Modernization in the Middle East: the Nineteenth Century, edited by Polk, William R. and Chambers, Richard L. (Chicago, 1968), pp. 279–80Google Scholar. Al-'Abbāsī, was also the muftī of Egypt: his legal decisions were collected into seven volumes and published as Al-Fatāwī al-mahdīya fī l-wāqi'āt al-miṣrīya (Cairo, a.h. 1301–1304)Google Scholar. See GAL, SII, 740.

64 For Goldziher's views on the neo-Mu'tazila, see his Die Richtungen der islamischen Koranauslegung (Leiden, 1920), pp. 315–44Google Scholar. Cf. also Casper, Robert, “Le renouveau du Mo'tazilisme”, Melanges de l'Institut dominicain détudes orientales du Caire, 4 (1957), pp. 141–202Google Scholar; Khalid, Detlev, “Some aspects of Neo-Mu'tazilism”, Islamic Studies, 8 (1969), pp. 319–47Google Scholar; Escovitz, Joseph H., “He was the Muḥammad ‘Abduh of Syria’: a study of Ṭāhir al-Jazā'irī and his influence”, International Journal of Middle East Studies, 18 (1986), pp. 297–300Google Scholar.

65 On the use of al-Bayḍāwī's commentary as a teaching text in al-Azhar at this time, see Mubārak, Khiṭaṭ, IV, 39.

66 Oriental Diary, p. 24, n. 12; cf. also p. 67.

67 Tagebuch, pp. 70, 76, has four citations of the name as “Aschmuni”; “Universitäts- Moschee el-Azhar”, p. 75, has “Schêch Aschmûnî”; Az Iszlám, pp. 320, 325, 326, gives “ez Asmúni sejkh”, etc. Goldziher's error of Ashmāwī for Ashmūnī is paralleled by an equally curious lapse in the Tagebuch, p. 68, where Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī becomes “der Afghane Abd-al-Dschakâl”.

68 See Taymūr, , Tarājim, pp. 50–2Google Scholar.

69 GAL, SII, 334.

70 Mubārak, , Khiṭaṭ, IV, 26–30Google Scholar. On the friendship between Mubārak and Goldziher, see Jelentés, p. 7; Tagebuch, pp. 67, 180, 199.

71 See Goldziher, , Az Iszlám, p. 322Google Scholar: The shaykh asks “Megértetted?” ( = fahimta, “Have you understood?”), to which the reply was “Hál Isten, megértettem” (= al-ḥamdu li-llāhi fahimtu, “Praise be to God, I have understood”), i.e. the “modest reply” of which Goldziher speaks in the Oriental Diary. Cf. also his “Universitäts-Moschee el-Azhar”, p. 76: “Hast Du verstanden?….Gott sei Dank; ich hab' es gefasst”; and the entry in the Oriental Diary (p. 151) for the next day, 6 January, when Goldziher is again asked “whether I understood everything”.

72 See Anas, Mālik ibn, Muwaṭṭa', edited by al-Bāqī, Muḥammad Fu'ād 'Abd (Cairo, 1370/1951), II, 703–10Google Scholar.

73 On his study tour Goldziher repeatedly manifests an impatient and hostile attitude toward those rituals and religious observances – whether in Judaism, Christianity, or Islam – which he regards as petty formal rites demanded by organized religion simply for their own sake and mindlessly performed in the same spirit by the obedient faithful. See, for example, Oriental Diary, pp. 92, 98, 99–101, 105, 110, 123, 124, 127, 132, 136.

74 See Abu-Lughod, Janet L., Cairo: 1001 years of the City Victorious (Princeton, 1971), pp. 105, 107, 108, 112Google Scholar.