Секция III
68
Sándor Földvári (Debrecen University, Pécel, Hungary)
National and Global Aspects of the Orientalistics
in the Interwar Hungary
The activity of
Ignac Goldziher
was finished by his passing away in 1921 and
still influenced the research life for a longer time, mainly on the hadis and the Islam
law. Being a Jew, he had sympathy to the Islam and consequently he was under
oppression by his rabbinic colleagues as prof. Wilhelm Bacher. However, parallelly
with this famous orientalist, another line of the Islam studies flew in Hungary.
Ignác Kúnos
was the first, who studied the Turkish folklore, gathered folk-tales
and performances (Karagöz) on the academic level, at the same time he published also
popular books, too, for the wide audience including the youth, too. These books were
reissued several time and made the Moslem folk-culture very popular in Hungary
in the 20–30-ies. Research papers of Kúnos have influenced not only the Hungarian
but the Turkish and wide Moslem academic life for a half of a century.
His student and follower was
Abdul-Karim Germanus
, who converted to the Islam
and became a very
hajji
also a famous professor at variousMoslemuniversities (in India,
Egypt, etc). Germanus worked a lot for popularizing Moslem culture in Hungary on
the professional level. His articles published in the Budapesti Szemle (“The Budapest
Review”, the academic monthly of the capital of Hungary) remained unknown for
the international audience, being written in Hungarian. Although he was the first who
analyzed the forgotten türbe of Gül Baba inBudapest and some other buildings, remained
from the Turkish era of Hungary (16–17 cc.), and for his initiative the restorations of
these ruined buildings were begun. Apupil of himwas the famous archeologist Győző
(Yusuf) Gerő, who excavated all the ruins remained from the Turkish era in Hungary.
Beyond the “History of Arabic Literature” and such well-known works, Abdul-
Karim Germanus published apologies for the Islam on the “race” question, too,
in Hungarian, when the chauvinism and nationalism had been rising in the 20-ies.
Moreover, Germanus was a pupil and follower of
Ármin Vámbéry
(Efendi Reshid) who
became only known as an expert of the Central-Asian Turkish languages and Sunni
costumes, but not for his other studies on the Moslem pilgrimage and shia culture, too.
«MeineWanderungen und Erlebnisse in Persien» [MyWanderings and Experiences in
Persia] was published in the late 19
th
but influenced in the early 20
th
century, determining
the folklorist investigations made by his followers as Kúnos and Germanus.
Somel Gözde (Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey)
Recent Developments in the historiography of Turkey: from the
pride of nation-building to the respect for Ottoman tolerance
Historiography may become a centre of heated debates whenever a significant
transformation takes place in the socio-political landscape of a country. Though these
