"So far away, yet so close": The correspondence of Ignaz Goldziher between 1863 and 1922

The paper will present a survey of the scholarly correspondence of over 13,000 letters of the founder of European studies of Islam, Ignaz Goldziher (1850-1921), which is freely available in digitized form in the repository of the Library and Information Centre of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. In addition to winning his daily bread as secretary of the Neolog Jewish community of Pest, teaching at the University and the Jewish Theological Seminary of Pest, and conducting research in his free time, Goldziher had enough time to remain an avid letter writer. He did not only strongly believe in the necessity of answering letters with lightning speed, but also put this principle into practice. His fame brought him into contact with renowned scholars all over the world. He also corresponded with students and ordinary people from remote Hungarian villages. His correspondence highlights his scholarly network. More importantly, however, the letters he received shed light on his personality.

Scholarly Correspondences Among Orientalists during the Early and Late Modern Period as a Historical Source: A Series of Lectures. The object of this lecture series is to bring together scholars and librarians engaged with collections of correspondences and/or include related projects that use appropriate digital tools to map and analyze such corpora. It is hosted by Sabine Schmidtke (NES@IAS) and María Mercedes Tuya (Digital Scholarship@IAS). For additional information on this event and the lecture series visit: https://albert.ias.edu/20.500.12111/8044.