Visiting libraries in Hungary one can be easily convinced that the Knowledge of Arabic has been present in Hungary since centuries. There were two main where Arabic played an important role in formation.
The first field was the Christian theology. In theological seminaries no one could disregard the fact the Old Testament was written in Hebrew, one of the Semitic Languages. In seminaries it was the general interest in Semitic languages that motivated the Arabic studies on the one hand.
At the same time all well-known polyglot Bibles contained an Arabic translation in addition to Greek, Latin, Hebrew, Aramaic and Syriac versions. It was the better understanding of the Bible that induced some theologians to study Arabic, on the other.
The polyglot Bibles in the old libraries of monasteries bear witness to the presence of the knowledge of Arabic among Catholic monks. The relatively small number and the superficial character of the Arabic Grammars written by Hungarian theologians in Latin (e.g. that of J. Dertsik) indicate that the scientific interest in Arabic was far less than that in Aramaic or Syriac.
A lot of the monks knowing Arabic studied in Hungarian monasteries, but a good number of them spent some time in Rome preparing himself for work in Muslim countries.
The other field was that of the foreign affairs. During and after the Turkish wars Hungary had a common border with the world of Islam, accordingly, Hungary itself and Hungary as part of a Habsburg monarchy had diplomatic and commercial contacts to eastern nations. The Important political and economic contacts explain why in Vienna, the capital of Austria as well as of Hungary in the famous diplomatic school the Sprachknaben specialized not only in western but also in eastern languages. The professors of the school (who belonged to different nations) compiled grammars and textbooks the main bulk of which remained unknown in other countries, although some of them were really excellent.
The level of scholarship in monasteries or in the diplomatic school of languages cannot be compared with that of the best universities in other European countries. In Oxford, Cambridge or Leyden chairs were established for the Arabic and Islamic studies centuries earlier. In these universities first the medical texts of Avicenna, Averroes and others, later the religious literature (including Quran and Bible, etc.) were in the center of interest. Countries with special contacts to the Arab world, e.g. Spain and Portugal, gathered large collections of Arabic manuscripts, sent students to Arab universities (e.g. Petrus Hispanus went to the Qarawiyyin University in Morocco as early as the 13th century and compiled the first Arabic grammar and vocabulary in Latin). In the history of the Hungarian scholarship there are no traces of similar scientific efforts.
The situation was changed by the reform of the Austro-Hungarian universities in 1855. In this year the Austro-Hungarian universities shifted from the outdated medieval model to the modern German model of higher education. According to the medieval model everybody began first to learn in the preparatory courses of the faculty of letters and having finished them with success students went on to learn either law or medicine or sciences in general.
Following the new model the classes of the secondary school took over the duties of the former faculty of letters. In the faculty of sciences students specialized in physics or chemistry or any other subject instead of learning all sciences as it was prescribed earlier.
In order to fulfill the new duties secondary schools needed teachers specialized in subject matters taught in the schools. The demand was met by establishing new faculties of letters different from the former ones. In these faculties of letters the aim was not to prepare university students for university studies, but to train teachers specialized in the subjects taught in the secondary schools: Hungarian language and literature, history, foreign languages, etc.
In the newly established faculties of humanities various chairs had to be established. Reading the old yearbooks of the university one can see that the first chairs were founded for history, literature, (ancient) philosophy, Latin and Russian, but interested students Arabic could attend special courses including oriental languages.
For example, the young and promising secondary-school student, I. Goldziher (1850-1921), attended courses on Persian and Turkish with special permission, and he studied Arabic at the Faculty of (Roman Catholic) Theology with J. Ruzicska.
As a consequence of his success and interest, J. Eotvos, the minister of education and devoted partisan of university reform, when seeking talented young men to send to German universities later to be appointed as professors at the university, choose the eighteen year-old young man for a scholarship and future professorship of the not yet founded chair of Semitic languages.
Unfortunately, while Goldziher continued his studies in Damascus and Cairo, the Vatican Council defined the dogma of papal infallibility in 1870 but P. Hatala who was professor of the New and Old Testament revelation at the faculty of theology did not accept it. Hatala thus became a heretic and had to leave. The higher authorities wanted to avoid making a martyr of him, so he was transferred to the faculty of letters and appointed instead of Goldziher, professor of Semitic languages.
The chair of Semitic languages founded in 1870 offered the first possibility in Hungary to carry on scientific research in the field of Arabic studies, but it was occupied by a professor of theology of the old stamp unqualified for Arabic. Continuing the tradition of Catholic theologies P. Hatala compiled an Arabic grammar in Hungarian and lectured on Arabic, but he remained what he was : a scholar of the Hebrew Old Testament and the Greek New Testament.
Goldziher began his career as an unpaid private professor. He was quite old when he, after Hatala's retirement in 1905, became ordinary professor. Following the traditions created by P. Hatala, Goldziher lectured on various Semitic languages and literatures like Hebrew, Aramaic, etc., but at the same time he introduced special Arabic and Islamic courses and after Hatala's retirement he began to deliver lectures on the history of the Islamic philosophy as well.
As the yearbooks of the university prove five-six students usually visited Hatala's courses. It is a matter of fact that only scores of students were in the philosophy faculty (i.e. faculty of letters) at that time, so the number indicates that Hatala's courses were popular. We are not informed about the number of Goldziher's students but we know that he had a large number of students not only from Hungary, but from the Balkans too. These students came from various Muslim communities living in Austro-Hungary or in other countries.
Goldziher was accepted and admired not only by fellow-professors all over the world, but by Muslim students as well.
This fact sheds new light on E. Said's summary statement asserting that the aim of the oriental studies in the European countries was the service of imperialism against the peoples in the Middle East. In 1991 Ahmed Fuad, a member of the royal family in Egypt, came to Budapest to offer him the professorship of Arabic philosophy at Cairo University. Although the Austro-Hungarian authorities thought it necessary to accept the invitation, Goldziher demurred. His ideal was an apolitical, pure science. Hungarian Orientalism has been mainly influenced by this attitude ever since. The interest in oriental languages in Hungary was not motivated by political aspirations of the country, because Hungary never wanted to conquest the East. The conscience of the oriental nomadic origin made Hungarians to turn to oriental cultures.
Goldziher died without leaving students of his rank and his library was sold to Jerusalem. He was the first scholar who broke with the practical learning of theologians going back to the traditions of missionary and diplomatic schools in Rome and Vienna and attached himself to the European, mainly German, philological tradition. His work has not been continued by anybody at the university of Budapest.
In compliance with traditions the next professor of Arabic too was a Semitist. M. Kmosko (1876- 1931) came from the seminary of Catholic priests, but he got a good philological training too. He devoted his life to the Oriental church fathers writing in Syriac. He prepared the edition of several volumes that are included in Migne's Patrologia Orientalists.
As a scholar of Arabic he investigated the Syriac and Arabic chronicles relating to the nomadic prehistory of the Hungarian people, and from here he turned to the Arabic geography. (He who was pointed out the unknown Arabic writer on geography, Ibn Dasta, is identical with the well-known Ibn Rusta).
In contradiction to Syriac text editions his studies devoted to the Arabic chronicles and writers on geography were written in Hungarian and remained unpublished. Thus his achievements in the field of Arabic studies are inaccessible to the scholarly world.
He collected an enormous material, he wrote the rough draft of his works in large copybooks in Hungarian, but everything he wrote remained unpublished. The copybooks are preserved in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. A research-group at the university in Szeged began to publish his bequest in the last years in Hungarian. The project is still in progress, but in consequence of the Hungarian language, the volumes containing his works will not take his name known to the world.
M. Kmosko, although he was a theologian as many of his predecessors, has got a good philological formation. After Goldziher nobody could afford to write on oriental issues without the necessary qualification accessible only at he faculty of letters.
In Hungary, were oriental studies were motivated by the society's interest in the oriental origin and prehistory of the Hungarian people, the investigation of the history of the Central-Asiatic and Eastern-European steppes was an inevitable duty of scholars. M. Kmosko as a professor of Arabic fulfilled his duty, but in consequence of his premature death and the circumstances mentioned above- his name remained and will remain unknown abroad.
Before the Second World War the minister of education K. Klebelsberg launched a program like J. Eotvos in the previous century after the university reform in 1855. he too decided to send many talented young people to learn abroad at the best universities of Western Europe. The young theologians of the reformed church were sent to Holland. Among them was K. Czegledy, son of the renowned S. Czegledy, who prepared a new translation of the Old Testament.
K. Czegledy went to Utrecht where he studied Arabic at a student of the famous de Goeje. Coming home to Hungary he got the vacant chair of Arabic after the second war. Being the only professor of Arabic for decades in the second half of the twentieth century he became the master of all Hungarian scholars of Arabic living now, who in turn regard themselves as descendants of the Dutch school of oriental studies.
K. Czegledy (1914-1996) continued what M. Kmosko has begun. He devoted his life to the investigation of the history of steppes. He began by reading Latin, Greek, Syriac and Arabic sources, later in his thirties he studied Armenian and Middle and New-Persian, in his forties he studied Turkic languages and in his fifties Chinese. Approaching to sixty he was ready to publish his first book in Hungarian under the title "Nomadok vandorlasa Napkeletr?l Napnyugatra" (Migration of Normands from Orient to Occident, Budapest, 1969).
In this book he analysed the most difficult questions of the history of steppes, e.g. the history of Huns, the problem of Hephtalites, etc. All this indicates that he, although he officially took the chair of Arabic, did not deal with Arabic issues. He was not an Arabist in strict sense; he can be rather regarded as an orientalist. The consequence of this fact is that he too remained unknown abroad.
Nevertheless, as professor of Arabic he transmitted what he learnt in his youth in Holland to the next generations. In this sense his activity means a turning point in the history of Arabic studies in Hungary. Before him Goldziher represented the beginning of Arabic scholarship in Hungary, but not having successor Kmosko had to lay new foundations. Kmosko died without successor, so Czegledy with his Dutch affiliation had to begin once again to build up Arabic scholarship in Hungary, but this time he succeeded in establishing a large school with many students.
The new generation appeared at the university at the end of the sixties. It was Fodor Sandor (Alexander Fodor, 1941) who got the position of an assistant at the chair of Arabic. His main interest is focused on the popular costumes, magic and related topics. He investigates the popular beliefs of the common people living in Muslim countries, especially in Egypt, pointing out that old Egyptian beliefs and costumes are present in the everyday life of Muslims as part of the Islamic heritage.
The next assistance was T. Ivanyi. He studied at the university Arabic and general linguistics, so he is specialized in the history of Arabic linguistics.
In the seventies I. Ormos joined them. His field is the history of the Arabic medicine. After K. Czegledy having retired A. Fodor became professor of Arabic.
While the university in Budapest was always the seat of the philological studies, in the first half of the twentieth century the Oriental Academy of Commerce, later its legal successors: Carl Marx Faculty of Economics, later the Budapest School of Economics and now the Economic Faculty of the University of Budapest was the other seat of the knowledge of the oriental languages. Arabic was and still is here one of the oriental languages taught for practical purposes.
In this faculty there is a department for foreign relations as well. Students of this department who combine Arabic with specialization in the Middle East can become experts of the Arab world with good practical knowledge of the language. Their teacher, K. Devenyi, is active at the Faculty of Letters as well; her special field is Arabic linguistics.
The "College of Commerce, Hotel and Catering Trade" is the third institution where students can learn Arabic. The great number of Arabists graduated at the Faculty of Letters enabled the College in finding able teachers for the language school where only western languages were taught earlier. The purpose of formation here is similar to that of the Faculty of Economics. The students of this college usually gather a good practical knowledge of the modern spoken Arabic, but the basic aim of the course is to prepare them for commercial correspondence.
After the change of the political regime (1990) a new university, the Pazmany Peter Catholic University was founded in 1992. in this university religion, religious movements and doctrines and the study of Middle Ages are in the limelight of the scientific program. Europe came into being and was formed in the basin of the Mediterranean Sea. At the same time the Mediterranean Sea was the birthplace of the three revealed religions (Judaism, Christendom, and Islam).
Consequently, the Faculty of Letters (in Piliscsaba, in a distance of 8 kilometers from Budapest) established a chair for medieval studies, for Hebrew (with emphasis on the Old Testament) and Arabic.
The chair of Arabic broke with the Semitic traditions of the state university in Budapest because Islam as religion is in the center of its scientific program. The difference between the Semitic or Islamic setting results in different programs of formation. Let alone the question of the obligatory minor languages (at the state university Hebrew, Syriac; at the Catholic University Turkish) the state university gives a good number of courses on Arabic linguistics, while the Catholic university pays more attention to Islamic philosophy and religious subjects as literature of hadith, theology (ilm al-kalam) dogmatic (aqaid), jurisprudence (fiqh), etc.
This second scientific workshop of Arabic philology came to be in 1993 on the basis of K. Czegledy's activity, because two of the three members of the department belonged to his students, the third one was student of K. Czegledy's students.
M. Maroth (1943) takes the chair of the department. His main field is Arabic philology, with special interest in the philosophically motivated Islamic theology (ilm al-kalam) and jurisprudence.
L. Tuske works with literary texts, he is mainly concerned with classical literary criticism. The youngest one is B. Major. He is interested in history, especially in medieval Arabic and Islamic history, with a special view to the Crusades.
In addition to the Faculty of Letters students can learn Arabic at the most traditional place too: at the Faculty of Theology. Gy. Fodor (1947) is the professor of the Biblical languages. He teaches Hebrew and other ancient languages, but being an Arabist by formation, he continues the centuries of tradition by giving courses on Arabic as well. At any rate, Arabic does not belong to the group of the obligatory subjects at the faculty of theology.
The last workshop of the Arabic studies is the Avicenna Institute of the Middle East Studies set up in 2001 by the Hungarian government in Piliscsaba. The scientific program of the institute is approved by a board of trustees consisting of five professors who are active in oriental studies. The appointed director (M. Maroth) has elected two deputies, one for the Iranian languages from the state university and one for Turkish from a research institute of the Academy of sciences. They elaborated the scientific program and selected the young members of the institute.
The institute has an internal and an international activity.
Internally it is a research-institute that offers working opportunity to mainly young scholars preparing PhD-thesis or those who have just finished their thesis. The young scholars carry out a scientific program together with the professors in different fields: literature, history, philosophy, linguistics, etc. This program results in a series of scholarly books written in foreign languages and in presentations of the cultural and scientific achievements of the Islamic countries written in Hungarian.
The institute organizes domestic and international conferences and congresses on various subjects. The next meeting will take place in February 2003, the subject of which will be the prospective development of Islam in the Middle East and its impact on the Arab-European relationships.
The institute sponsors university courses. In the last semester researchers of oriental art working in different museums were united in a series of lectures delivered at the state university. The lectures including the problems of architecture, miniatures, pottery, rugs and wall carpets will be published in a volume under preparation that will present "the legacy of Islam". This series of lectures will represent the section of art history.
Internationally the main task of the institute is (in addition to the traditional philological research) to find meeting points between Muslims and Christians, the Arab world and Europe, etc.
This aim shall be reached by establishing personal contacts with Arab scholars and universities and carrying out joint scientific programs, inviting young scholars for shorter or longer scholarships; and professors both from the Arab world and European countries for a shorter or longer stay devoted to research or delivering lectures of various topics. (The first professor comes from the Moroccan al-Qarawiyyin University to deliver lectures on hadith in the next future).
The scientific program of the institute is similar to that of the P?zm?ny Péter Catholic University. Taking into consideration the similarity of the program and the common seat (both the Faculty of Letters of the university and the institute are working in Piliscsaba on the opposite sides of the same road) they expressed the wish to conclude a special agreement on cooperation.
If they really do it and succeed in uniting forces, a new and a most serious center of Arabic studies will be brought about in Hungary.