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, 221-290. 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 practice2"' and prepare a revised German version of this study for the benefit of readers unfamiliar with Hungarian. T w o 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),2 1 7 Muslim travellers (1875),2 , 8 the original home of the Semites (1875)2'9 and the Arabs of Spain (1877).220 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 < i y has been replaced by the chaster Further, the list of appellations for modern colloquial Arabic, lugat
216 Cf. on this Conrad. 'Pilgrim from Pest' 110-111, 146; 'Ignaz Goldziher on Ernest Renan' 164-165.
217 But for the link with Muhammedanische Studien see above n. 114.
218 Above n. 153.
219 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).
SIMON HOPKINS
al-'awämm etc. (pp. 25-26), was incorporated into a later German article on Ibn al-Nadim's Fihrist in ZDMG 36 (1882), 282-284 = GS II 125-126, and the Arab grammarians' theory on the relationship between form and meaning (p. 44) reappears in Goldziher's magisterial review of Berliner's Beiträge zur hebräischen Grammatik im Talmud und Midrasch (Berlin 1879) in ZDMG 34 (1880), 379: J^ LLj *LJI SjUj
^ "'iT All ü4_J j
Secondly, after the publication of On the History of Grammar among the Arabs Goldziher's scholarly tastes, as we have seen, moved away from matters philological and tended more and more towards the study of Islam. It very much looks as if Goldziher, who in any case was temperamentally never in a hurry to rush into print,221 after 1878 had neither the wish nor the time to develop his A nyelvtudomány történetéről az araboknál into a full-fledged German monograph. The decision to leave the work in Hungarian was doubtless made easier by the appearance shortly afterwards of H. Derenbourg's edition of Sibawayhi's Kitäb (Paris 1881-1889). A work so fundamental to Arabic philology could hardly be left out of consideration, and to take it properly into account would have involved Goldziher in much laborious research in a field from which he was now moving away.
Goldziher, as we have repeatedly observed, was primarily a historian of culture and ideas. He was interested in literary rather than linguistic history, and hence On the History of Grammar among the Arabs is concerned, as the subtitle An Essay in Literary History explicitly states, more with the development of linguistic literature in Arabic than with the development of Arabic linguistic forms - an additional chapter on 'Az arab szótárirodalom fejlődése' [The development of Arabic lexicography] was planned, but never printed and no such work has been found in the Goldziher Nachlass. He does, however, address the linguistic material itself, especially in chapter 2, which deals with "Az arab nyelvészek állása a dialektusokhoz és a népnyelvhez" [The attitude of the Arab philologists to the dialects and to the vernacular]. Since Goldziher was incapable of writing anything trivial, this chapter well repays a closer look.
Goldziher's view of things was essentially of a dynamic character, the focus of his interest being placed firmly on the flow of ideas across time and space. He was not content with observation of a static, synchronic state of affairs alone, but was always eager to discover whence things had developed into what they had, whither they subsequently led and to what they are related. This diachronic and comparative approach applies to his linguistic preferences too. It was only natural that he should take an interest in the historical evolution of Arabic and its dialects and in their typological relation to other Semitic languages. A rare glimpse into Goldziher's views on such matters is found in the chapter under discussion, in which he
221 This well known characteristic is expressed by Goldziher himself: "aber ich habe die Art, das Fertige i m m e r lange liegen zu lassen, oft sehr lange" (Hanisch, Briefwechsel 306). Cf.
also ibid. 310, 318.
THE LANGUAGE STUDIES OF IGNAZ GOLDZIHER
subscribes (p. 20)222 to a very important principle of comparative Semitic linguistics, viz. that typologically Biblical Hebrew and the modern Arabic dialects, having passed through a number of similar processes, arc at a comparable (analytic) stage of development, both of them opposed to classical Arabic, which displays a more archaic (synthetic) character. He draws an evolutionary parallel between Semitic and Romance.
By way of concrete illustration of this principle (which Goldziher was not, incidentally, the first to propound) he classed together (p. 13) the Biblical Hebrew and colloquial Arabic prefixes of the imperfect (ni-qtol etc.), contrasting them with those of classical Arabic (na-qtul etc.). He very rightly observed that "this phenomenon is important and interesting from the point of view of both the historical and the comparative grammar of the Semitic languages". The phenomenon in question is that which is called in traditional Arabic grammar taltala, came later to be known in Semitic philology as "Barth's law", and was subsequently validated on the basis of Ugaritic by H. L. Ginsberg. In further illustration Goldziher mentioned (p. 17 n. 2) the similarity between the Quran reading ya'murokurn (by ixtiläs <
classical Arabic ya'murukum) and the corresponding vowelless forms of Biblical Hebrew and colloquial Arabic. He also drew attention to similarities in the development of the feminine ending tä' marbüta (pp. 17 n. 3, 23) and the suffixes -üna ~ -it of the imperfect (pp. 21-22).
Following an important terminological distinction rendered in the English translation as "dialect" (dialektus) vs. "vernacular" (népnyelv), the chapter is divided into two sections. The first deals with "dialects", by which Goldziher means what in Arabic are called lahajät al-fuslui, i.e. the tribal dialects of the pre-Islamic and early Islamic periods which were regarded by the Arabic philologists as a legitimate part of the 'arabiyya and hence worthy of study. These "dialects" are opposed to the
"vernaculars" which form the subject of the second section. By "vernacular"
Goldziher means the modern Neo-Arabic colloquials of today, which are not considered by traditional Islam as part of the 'arabiyya, play no part whatever in Muslim education and enjoy no prestige in Islamic society. The frequent use in scholarly literature of such ambiguous terms as "Arabic dialects" coupled with a certain confusion in the internal division of Arabic into periods and types""' make Goldziher's terminological distinction very useful indeed.224
""" Ballagi & Goldziher (see above n. 71) 122, 143, referred to here, deal with vestigial case endings in Hebrew, but no historical or comparative discussion is given there.
221 For example, in the entry "Arabiyya' in EE I 561 (C. Rabin) the "dialects" are part of the
"vernaculars and both are modern, whereas Goldziher's "dialects" correspond to what is there labelled "early Arabic" within the "pre-classical division.
224 Note, however, that Goldziher uses other terms also in order to speak about "dialects", e.g. köznyelv and nyelvjárás, which are not reflected by different equivalents in the translation.
SIMON HOPKINS
The first section on the (ancient) "dialects" begins with the central role of the language of Quraysh, goes on to mention the speech of other groups, has a small discussion of urban dialects and ends with an account of linguistic differences between the various tribes of Arabia. Much of the information on the ancient dialects was provided by Suyüti's Muzhir, one of Goldziher's favourite books, "whose importance for [the] Arab literary history cannot be stressed enough" (p. 15). There then follows the section on (modern) "vernacular" Arabic, containing discussions of the dichotomy between literary : colloquial, the attitude of the Arab philologists to the spoken language and finally the lahn al-ämma literature.225
It is only to be expected that Goldziher's interests in the "dialects" and the
"vernacular" should be drawn towards the historical and cultural. On the historical plane, we may ask what is the chronological relationship between the two? And what is the relationship of the "dialects" and the "vernacular" to the classical language?
And on the cultural plane, what is the functional difference between vernacular and classical today in the Arabic-speaking world? It is of great interest to see how Goldziher stood on some of these great issues of Arabic philology, aspects of which, well over a century later, are still very much open. He perceived very clearly that the distinction between what he calls "dialect" (dialektus) and "vernacular" (népnyelv) does not consist merely in chronological considerations, i.e. that the former is ancient colloquial Arabic and the latter modem colloquial Arabic. He devotes a considerable effort to showing that characteristically "vernacular" features, and with them the diglossic "two levels" (két fok) of Arabic (p. 24), are in fact very old indeed. We have already mentioned demonstrative di(h) and the diminutive möye. Goldziher further noted (p. 13) that the typically colloquial pronunciation kilme for classical kalima "word" is already found in the ancient dialect of Tamim, that there is evidence for the vernacular : classical cleavage as early as the Umayyad period (p.
24) and that the caliph al-Walld b. 'Abd al-Malik (regn. 86-96 A.H.) was notorious for his bad Arabic and lapses into the spoken register (pp. 29-30). Such facts plainly show that the roots of today's colloquials run very deep, that in Umayyad times Neo-Arabic was used even in the highest strata of the Arab nobility, and that "vernacular"
Arabic, far from being a merely modem phenomenon, was already spoken at the time of Muhammad (pp. 22, 24). From this, one supposes that in the debate over the pre-Islamic or post-Islamic origin of the Arabic diglossia Goldziher would have subscribed to the view that Neo-Arabic, i.e. the uninflected, analytical type to which the modem colloquial dialects belong, already existed before Islam."''
225 Goldziher returned to lahn al-'ämma in ZDMG 35 (1881), 147-152 = GS 11 102, but again he is interested in this material more as a literary genre than as a source of linguistic facts.
226 [In an unpublished letter dated 11.11.1897 Goldziher writes to Nöldeke as follows:
"Durch Unwohlsein (nervöses K o p f w e h [sic; ?]) war ich verhindert den Empfang der wichtigen Abhandl., Bemerkungen über die Sprache der alten Ar.
allsogleich anzuzeigen und für die gründliche Belehrung über die dort behandelte Hauptfrage aller arab. Philologie herzlich zu danken. Glauben Sie, dass der Beginn des
T H E LANGUAGE STUDIES OF IGNAZ GOLDZIHER
In the light of the evident antiquity of the "vernacular", Goldziher pointed out (p. 18) that the essence of the linguistic dichotomy so characteristic of Arabic lies more in the distinction between literary (irodalmi) Schriftarabisch : colloquial (vulgaris) than in ancient (ó) Altarabisch : modern (új). But Goldziher is fully aware that such a binary division alone is not sufficient to account for a rather complicated situation. Within the vernacular itself (which may be written as well as spoken) there are higher registers approaching the classical language and lower registers tending towards raw colloquial speech (legvulgarisabb vulgar nyelv),."for the colloquial has its grades (J'okozat), too" (p. 28). Although the hundred years and more which have elapsed since the publication of Goldziher's book have seen a large increment of information on these subjects, the problem of suitable terminology has not yet been solved and the age of the Neo-Arabic "vernacular" type is under discussion to this day.
There is a curious item in Goldziher's chapter 2 which merits discussion. At the very beginning of the book (p. 3) the author expresses surprise that the manifestly manufactured tradition ascribing the beginning of Arabic grammar to the caliph 'Ali should find any acceptance among critical scholars "in our sceptical era". "7 It is, therefore, at first glance curious to find Goldziher himself (pp. 20-21) lending unreserved credence to the vague, uncritical and unsubstantiated information supplied by W. G. Palgrave "to the astonishment of the scholarly world" on the continued existence in Arabia of fully inflected spoken classical Arabic. In Palgrave's Narrative of a Year's Journey through Central and Eastern Arabia (1862-63), 2 vols. (London - Cambridge 1865) we read of a spoken idiom in the Hä'il area of central Nejd which is "with very slight exceptions, entirely unvitiated, and follows in general the minute rules and exigencies of what is sometimes, though very incorrectly, called the grammatical dialect" (I 25). In this region, avers Palgrave, "the smallest and raggedest child that toddles about the street lisps in the correctest book-Arabic (to use an inexact denomination) that ever De Sacy studied or Sibawee'yah professed", for here "Arabic at the present day is spoken precisely as it was in the age of Mahomet" (p. 311). In Riyäd Palgrave found the local dialect "in the main the pure and unchanged dialect of the Coran, no less living and familiar to all now than in the seventh century" (p. 463).
Goldziher adduced some of Palgrave's affirmations, "the authenticty of which nobody has the right to doubt" (p. 21), as part of an argument against the view of
i'räblosen Sprechens, so wie der übrigen Erscheinungen des Volksarabischen chronologisch fixirt werden könnte? Jedenfalls wird es eine Periode gegeben haben, in welcher gebildete Leute noch den vollen altgrammat. Sprachausdruck gebrauchten, das gemeine Volk aber vulgär redete, so dass beide Sprachstufen neben einander lebten." The Abhandlung referred to was published in ZA 12 (1897), 171 ff. and subsequently became the first chapter of Nöldeke's Beiträge zur semitischen Sprachwissenschaft. 1. O.].
227 Goldziher had already referred to this matter in a short note in ZDMG 29 (1875), 320-321
= GS I 364.
SIMON H O P K I N S
Wetzstein and others that classical Arabic had never been really alive as a natural spoken tongue and owed its existence largely to the activity of learned grammarians.
Goldziher's rejection of this theory may well be justified, but we may doubt if Palgrave's information lends him the support which he believed it did. Palgrave belonged to that tribe of educated adventurers, male and female, which were a characteristic feature of Victorian England; his travels, which indeed make very entertaining reading,22'8 were popular fare at a time of great public interest in things of the orient,229 appeared in quick succession in several editions and were translated into French and German. Palgrave was not, however, an observer of proven reliability23" and his statements on inflected spoken classical Arabic never rise above the vague, impressionistic generalities quoted above.23'
In his acceptance of Palgrave's reports at face value, I do not think we need convict Goldziher of excessive gullibility. There is no reason, in principle, to deny the possibility of fully inflected classical Arabic having survived somewhere in the depths of inner Arabia. If Goldziher may have reasoned - an ancient Semitic language such as Neo-Aramaic can defy historical probability and survive in isolated pockets down to modem times, perhaps the ancient 'arabiyya too is still to be heard in some remote recesses of the peninsula? He may have been encouraged in such a thought by his familiarity with the work of J. G. Wetzstein, whose lectures on the language and customs of the bedouin he had attended in Berlin.232 Wetzstein, although himself not believing in the antiquity of the case-system of classical Arabic, had published, while Goldziher was a student in Germany, a pioneering study entitled 'Sprachliches aus den Zeltlagern der syrischen Wüste', ZDMG 22 (1868), 69-194. This article, which Goldziher quotes (p. 19), substantiated an important discovery already made by G.Wallin in 1851, viz. that in the bedouin dialects of the Syrian desert and Northern Arabia vestiges of the ancient tanwin were still very much alive. Since - Goldziher may have reasoned further - the Arabic spoken in urban centres such as Beirut and Damascus (with which he was personally familiar) had lost the old case-system almost entirely, whereas bedouin dialects (as Wetzstein
2 - 8 Goldziher, it m a y be noted, had an insatiable appetite for travel literature (Tagebuch 92, 110).
229 This was the time, inter alia, of V á m b é r y ' s triumphant visit to London; see Conrad, JRAS 1 9 9 0 , 2 4 3 - 2 4 4 , 2 5 5 - 2 5 6 .
230 See Fück, Die arabischen Studien in Europa 198, n. 506.
231 On him in general see M. Allan, Palgrave of Arabia. The Life of William Gifford Palgrave 1826-1888. London 1972; B. Braude in: The Jewish Discovery of Islam. Studies in Honor of Bernard Lewis, ed. M. Kramer, Tel Aviv 1999, 77-93 - neither source mentions Palgrave's alleged linguistic discovery.
232 Tagebuch 37. Goldziher's notes taken at Wetzstein's lectures are preserved in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in Budapest. [Sitten und Leben der Araber / nach Vorträgen des Dr. Wetzstein. 1868/9 Sommersemester. 37 leaves in 8°. Goldziher-gyüjtemény M S no. 101.1. O.]
T H E L A N G U A G E STUDIES OF IGNAZ GOLDZIHER
had shown) had preserved considerable traces at least of tanwin, one might surmise that the conservatism of the language should increase as one left the cities of the Levant and travelled south into the nomadic culture of the peninsula. Such a train of thought in 1878 would not have been at all unreasonable. No dialectological work had yet then been done to prove or disprove such a hypothesis, which in itself is rather plausible. Even today there are large tracts of Arabia which remain unknown to Arabic dialectology. The dialects of the regions indicated by Palgrave, however, have been studied in some detail and the plain fact is that no dialect remotely matching the description of Palgrave has yet been discovered. His statements on the survival of spoken classical Arabic in the mouths of the "smallest and raggedest"
children of Najd are but a romantic invention.2 3 3
8. Conclusion
Having given a sketch of Goldziher's philological interests in and his writings on language subjects, Arabic and other, we may sum up and conclude. Goldziher's name lives primarily, and with every justification, as the founder of the modern study of Islam. As a philologist in the narrow, i.e. the linguistic and textual, sense he is less well known. It is as an Islamist, not as an Arabist that Goldziher's name is especially remembered and revered. We have seen, however, that his interests in linguistic subjects were rather wide, not only in Arabic but in other languages also, and that he
233 Goldziher was not alone in accepting Palgrave's statements, see F. W. M. Philippi, Wesen und Ursprung des Status Constructus im Hebräischen, Weimar 1871, 124 n. 2. Highly
233 Goldziher was not alone in accepting Palgrave's statements, see F. W. M. Philippi, Wesen und Ursprung des Status Constructus im Hebräischen, Weimar 1871, 124 n. 2. Highly