Goldziher between European Orientalism and the Arab Nahda: Digitally Mapping a Far-Reaching Network

Rukayyah Reichling (University of Amsterdam) and Kotoz Abdelhafiz Ahmed (Leuven Centre for the Study of Islam, Culture and Society)

The Goldziher Nachlass is remarkable in many ways: it is enormous, multilingual, well catalogued, and digitally available. It provides historians with invaluable insights into aspects Goldziher’s noteworthy scholarly biography, and gives a sense of the intimate relations he held with both European Orientalism and the Arab Nahda. We argue that with the aid of a variety of digital tools and methodologies, the Goldziher Nachlass will prove to be an illuminating corpus in reconstructing the historical Arab-Orientalist network of the long nineteenth century. The multilayered and far-reaching connections of Goldziher’s correspondence clearly illustrate his position on the nexus of a maturing Orientalist enterprise and a blooming Arab intellectual awakening. To illustrate, we will highlight two significant connections on this network that left a lifelong impact on Goldziher: firstly, Goldziher’s relationship with his Arab mentor Tahir Al-Jaza’iri and, secondly, the scholarly as well as brotherly bond Goldziher maintained with C. Snouck Hurgronje, the most significant actor in Dutch Orientalism at the time. Finally, we will briefly turn to the possibilities that increasingly available digital research tools offer to future generations of researchers and how these tools open up the way for new research questions and avenues.

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.