Building Bridges: Ignaz Goldziher and His Correspondents

Hans-Jürgen Becker, Dr. theol. (1989), Georg-August-Universität Göttingen, is Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies at that university. He has published editions, translations and monographs on Rabbinic Judaism, including the Talmud Yerushalmi (7 vols., Mohr 1991-2001) and Avot de-Rabbi Natan (3 vols., Mohr 2004-2016). Kinga Dévényi, Ph.D. (1985), independent scholar. She has published extensively on topics ranging from the history of Arabic grammar to codicology, including a Catalogue of the Arabic Manuscripts in the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences (Leiden: Brill; Budapest: MTAK, 2016). Sebastian Günther, Ph.D. (1989), Georg August University, Göttingen, is Professor and Chair of Arabic and Islamic at this university. He has published extensively on the intellectual history of Islam, including the edited volume Knowledge and Education in Classical Islam: Religious Learning between Continuity and Change (2 vols., Brill 2020). Sabine Schmidtke, Ph.D. (1990), Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton NJ, is Professor of Islamic Intellectual History at that institution. She has published on topics ranging from intellectual history, the history of Oriental studies, and the Arabic Bible, including Martin Schreiner between Islamic Studies and “Wissenschaft des Judentums”: A Study of His Life and Work (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2024).

List of Figures

Notes on Contributors



1 Scholarly Correspondence: Mapping the DNA of Scholarship. An Introduction

 Hans-Jürgen Becker, Kinga Dévényi, Sebastian Günther, Sabine Schmidtke



2 “In vollkommener Verehrung”: Israel Friedlaender’s Letters to Goldziher

 Camilla Adang



3 “Your unconscious personal influence started me on my course”: On the Correspondence of Ignaz Goldziher and Duncan B. Macdonald

 Kinga Dévényi



4 Ignaz Goldziher: The Founding Father of Gesture Studies in Arabic and Islamic Studies

 Livnat Holtzman and Miriam Ovadia



5 Rediscovering the Goldziher Legacy in Jerusalem: Religion, Language, and History in the Making of a Hebrew University

 Amit Levy



6 On The Kiss: An Early Piece of Correspondence between Ignaz Goldziher and Immanuel Löw

 Dóra Pataricza and Máté Hidvégi



7 A Complicated Relationship: Carlo Landberg’s Friendship with Ignaz Goldziher—Between Ambition and Anti-Semitism

 Christoph Rauch



8 Arabicae investigationes in the Correspondence between Carlo Alfonso Nallino and Ignaz Goldziher, 1893 through 1920

 Valentina Sagaria Rossi



9 Ignaz Goldziher, Walter Gottschalk, and the Kitāb al-Aymān by Ibrāhīm b. ʿAbd Allāh al-Najīramī

 Sabine Schmidtke



10 Publishing Ibn Tūmart’s “Book” in Colonial Algeria: The Correspondence of J.D. Luciani, E. Doutté and M. Gaudefroy-Demombynes with I. Goldziher

 Jan Thiele



11 The Goldziher Collection at the National Library of Israel

 Samuel Thrope



12 Goldziher and Jewish Scholarship in Light of His Correspondence with Immanuel Löw and Michael Guttmann

 Tamás Turán



13 Friend, Teacher, “Shaykh”: Goldziher and the Founders of Islamic Studies in St. Petersburg

 Maxim Yosefi



14 Goldziher as a Master: The Correspondence of Ignaz Goldziher and Martin Schreiner

 Dora Zsom



15 The Published Correspondence of Ignaz Goldziher: A Bibliographical Guide

 Kinga Dévényi and Sabine Schmidtke



Index