ARCHIVUM

OTTOMANICUM
Edited by Gyrgy Hazai

with assistance of
P. Fodor, G. Hagen, E. hsanolu,
H. nalck, B. Kellner-Heinkele,
H.W. Lowry, H.G. Majer,
Rh. Murphey, M. Ursinus, and E.A. Zachariadou

31 (2014)

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ARCHIVUM OTTOMANICUM concerns itself primarily with Ottoman history
and Ottoman philology. However, the editors also welcome articles on subjects
related to Ottoman studies in the history and culture of Europe, including in
particular Danubian Europe, the Black Sea area and the Caucasus, and in the history
and culture of the Arab and the Iranian lands, and Byzantium.
Authors of articles will receive a pdf-file of their contribution and a free copy of the
volume in which their article appears.
Contributors are invited to send articles in two copies to:
Professor Dr. Gyrgy Hazai, c/o Twin Media, Vci u. 18, 1052 Budapest, Hungary
(e-mail: Dr.Hazai.Kinga@pronet.hu or Cecilia.Hazai@nextra.hu).
Secretary of the Editorial Board and technical editor:
Mikls Fti (e-mail: fotimiklos@yahoo.com).

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ISSN 0378-2808
 CONTENTS

Gyrgy Hazai Pl Fodor

Arminius Vmbry (18321913) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Istvn Vsry
Arminius Vmbry, a pioneer of Turkic studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11

Jacob M. Landau
Arminius Vmbry and Abdul Hamid II . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21

Barbara Kellner-Heinkele
Visions of Bukhara A comparative look at the travels of Arminius
Vmbry and George Nathaniel Curzon . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

Ruth Bartholom
The perception of Arminius Vmbry and his journey in Central Asia
in the past and present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41

Mustafa S. Kaalin
Vmbry and Chaghatay studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

Ferenc Csirks Gbor Fodor

Vmbry as a public figure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53

Mikls Srkzy
Newly discovered Vmbry documents from the USA
A preliminary report . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61

***

Dimitri Theodoridis
Scriptio detrectans. Stigmatisierende Anorthographie
nichtmuslimischer und kopfber gestellte Schreibung verhasster
Namen bei den Osmanen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79

Theophilus C. Prousis
Strangfords busy fortnight at the Porte . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
4

Phokion P. Kotzageorgis
The multiple certifications in Ottoman judicial documents
(hccets) from monastic archives . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117

H. Erdem ipa
Sultan of a golden age that never was: The image of Selm I
(r. 15121520) in Ottoman advice literature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129

Ferenc Dvid Pter Olh

Hungarian foreign policy and the Caucasian region in the 1940s
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157

Ilona Dorogi Gyrgy Hazai

Zum Werk von Eb Bekr b. Behrm Dimik ber die
Geschichte und den Zustand des Osmanischen Reiches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 167
 VMBRY AS A PUBLIC FIGURE

FERENC CSIRKS GBOR FODOR

This paper discusses rmin Vmbrys political activities and their relationship with
his scholarly endeavors. It consists of three parts. First it will outline the broad histo-
rical framework, discussing Vmbry in an international political context. Then it
will turn to the most prominent and controversial field of Vmbrys political activi-
ties, his relations with the Ottoman Porte and Sultan Abdul Hamid II as reflected in
documents preserved at the Public Record Office in London. Finally, it will try to
contextualize Vmbrys political and scholarly activities against the background of
the heyday of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy.
Vmbrys career encompassed the better half of the so-called long 19th
century. The chief processes of world history of the time included Western indust-
rialization and mechanization, the related rush for new markets and the consequent
increase in colonization, the crisis of traditional dynastic empires in general and the
Ottoman Empire in particular and, related to it, the gradual dominance of new cultu-
ral-political ideas with revolutionary potency, most importantly, nationalism, which
was detrimental to both the multinational empires and the European status quo.
Vmbry propelled himself to universal fame with his daring journey to Central
Asia. With this he became a prominent figure in what came to be known as the Great
Game, made famous in Rudyard Kiplings novel entitled Kim. This was nothing else
but the struggle for political and economic influence in the vast terrain extending
from Tibet to Iran. Britain colonized India from the late 18th through the mid-19th
century, while from the 16th through the 18th century Russian empire building went
hand in hand with her expansion to the East, ending in the acquisition of Siberia.
One strand of British policy makers feared that the ultimate goal of Russian aspirati-
ons was British India. This conflict triggered a veritable cold war between the two
great powers, which had diverse facets, occasionally leading to military intervention,
but mostly fought as a war of reconnaissance and intelligence for the preservation or
extension of spheres of influence.
The other sphere of Vmbrys forays into international politics was the Ottoman
Empire. During his first stay in Istanbul Vmbry became popular among diplomats,
especially British ones, and certain Ottoman circles. However, the first official
meeting between the Hungarian scholar and a British ambassador, Charles Alison,
took place in Tehran in 1864, after his return from Central Asia, when Vmbry was
asked to summarize his experiences and give information about three missing Eng-
lish subjects, Lieutenant W. H. Wyburd, Captain Arthur Connolly and Lieutenant

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54 F. CSIRKS G. FODOR

Colonel Charles Stoddard, who had not returned from Central-Asia. As the news of
his remarkable journey and comeback spread around the embassies of Tehran, Sir
Charles Alison, the British ambassador, invited him for a dinner, and asked him to
write a summary of his adventures. He provided him with letters of recommendation
addressed to Lord Palmerston, Lord Strangford and other influential statesmen in
London. In the meantime, the Russian ambassador, later chancellor, de Giers, tried
to convince Vmbry to share his experiences in St. Petersburg, but Vmbrys
staunch Russian antipathy, which had originated in his childhood when the Russians
had suppressed the Hungarian revolution, made it impossible for him to accept this
offer. After Vmbry returned from his famous journey, his popularity as a political
expert in Western Europe and especially Britain was in sharp contrast with his re-
ception in Hungary, where he felt that virtually nobody cared about his achieve-
ments. Nevertheless, he later became professor at the University of Pest and member
of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.
The next phase in his contacts with British policy makers commenced with his
tours of political speeches in Britain; slowly he became an informal advisor of the
Foreign Office. He did not make it a secret that he had been consulted before the
British occupied Egypt in 1882. It is probably this incidence that made it possible
for Vmbry to become an official mediator between sultan Abdul Hamid II and the
British Foreign Office during the next decades.
Vmbry was employed officially between 1889 and 1911, and his essential task
was making peace between two friends of mine, namely between the English and
the Turks as he wrote in a letter. The good old Turkish-English relations deterio-
rated after the British intervention in the pharaohs land, which heavily damaged the
authority of the sultan in the eyes of his Muslim subjects. According to Vmbrys
reports forwarded from Budapest to his British contact, Philip Currie, Vmbrys
mission started in this hostile atmosphere, but due to his special relations with the
Ottomans, especially the sultan himself, his reception was a brilliant one as he
remarked later. He was invited for dinners and audiences at the Yildiz palace.
During his private conversations with the sultan Vmbry tried to convince his old
friend to be a partner in the restoration of Turko-British relations, and to give up his
new-born policy of strict neutrality, which aimed to maintain the balance between
British and Russian interests in the Ottoman Empire. The fortification of the Bos-
phorus was also a crucial subject touched in the conversations. The project of re-
fortifying the strongholds along the Bosphorus with modern guns during the second
half of the 1880s with German assistance, especially the installation of Krupp guns
in the Dardanelles, made the British rather anxious. The other sore point of conten-
tion was the Armenian question, which particularly after the Treaty of Berlin in
1878 became more and more dangerous to the stability of the empire.
Vmbry claimed that his extraordinary memory made him able to write down
word-for-word all what was touched on during the conversations with Abdul Hamid
and other Turkish statesmen, and report it to the Foreign Office in London. After
this first visit Vmbry returned five times to the Ottoman capital during the next

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 VMBRY AS A PUBLIC FIGURE 55

years, once as a chairman of a committee of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

However he was also in permanent correspondence with the sultan, who was clever
enough to utilize Vmbry as a philo-Turkish publicist with good reputation in
Britain and the Western world at large.
From 1892, after a quite successful period, relations between the Hungarian
scholar and the Ottoman ruler diminished. As Permanent Undersecretary Philip
Currie bitterly remarked in a secret note: Vambry has only had one tip this year
last June. He has written several letters since, not of much value. This was partly
due to the rising tension caused by western reports relating the massacres of the
Ottoman Armenians, which became slowly as problematic as the Bulgarian Question
once was. Furthermore, due to a serious injury Vmbry was not able to visit Istan-
bul and send useful information about the political situation at the seraglio.
Although their relation was restored later and the Hungarian scholar visited the
Turkish capital on a regular basis, the bloody events of 18941896 together with the
Russian-British rapprochement greatly undermined Vmbrys efforts to bring the
British and the Ottomans together.
Aside from the aforementioned subjects, Vmbry touched on other questions in
his letters to the Foreign Office. Through his personal network of contacts in Asia,
he was quite well-informed about political affairs in the Near and Far-East. Such as
the Persian question. In 1890, the British government aimed to acquire the tobacco
monopoly through the Tobacco-Rgie company. Vmbry appositely remarked:
Bearing in mind that the tobacco in the whole East, and the particularly in Persia,
less indispensable than bread and water, and that this kind of restriction will weigh
heavier upon the people than the most frightful draconic law. Later he was ap-
pointed by the Hungarian government to be the company of the Qajar Shah in Buda-
pest, where they spent a day together on an excursion. During the boat trip Vmbry
tried to convince the Shah to prefer British railway concession offers to Russian
ones.
Vmbry was a proponent of British interests in India as well. Certain Muslim
groups, stirred up by sultan Abdul Hamid IIs pan-islamism, wanted to overthrow
British rule. Vmbry immediately wrote an open letter in a European Newspaper
addressed to the Indian Muslims, and planned to travel to India and speak on the
advantage of British rule and the wickedness of Russia as Currie said in a con-
fidential memo. Finally, however, he was dissuaded from this plan by the Foreign
Office. As he bitterly remarked later, It is now forty five years ago since I was
asked by the late Sir Ch. Alison to enquire in the steppe after Captain Wyburd of the
Intelligence Department and since that time I am constantly active with my pen in
the British interests in Asia. I doubt whether the Government is aware of my work
done in India in furthering the British sympathies of the Mohammedans.
A staunch exponent of European culture and its supremacy, Vmbry was also
devoted to helping Muslims all over the world. As he confessed in a letter,

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56 F. CSIRKS G. FODOR

when an occasional cry was raised in some Turkish, Persian and Arabic
publication for freedom, law and orderI felt compelled to render what as-
sistance I could.
During his career as mediator or secret agent he received various payments from the
Foreign Office, usually under the name of travel expenses, which was converted
later into a regular allowance, then a life pension. The money he had secretly re-
ceived for his services over twenty-one years exceeded 5000, which was a quite
nice sum.
His mission, however, was never completed. The British and Ottoman Empires
entered the First World War on opposite sides. Nave as he might have been in great
power politics and secret diplomacy, Vmbrys reports provided an interesting
source of information for the British Foreign Office, and provide for the historians
of today a fascinating insight into the world power maneuvers of the last decades of
the 19th through the first decade of the 20th century, a period that decided the fate of
empires.
Despite his public activity Vmbry was a real scholar. According to an an-
ecdote, he was invited to the sultan, where he listened with great interest to the con-
versation between the ruler of the Ottoman empire and the Japanese princes which
turned mostly on militarytopics, then, as he wrote in his secret report,
I drew the attention of the Sultan to the race affinities existing between
Turks and Japanese, as members of the Ural-Altaic family.
In 1921, Stephan Gaselee, Librarian and Keeper of the Papers at the Foreign office,
summed up brilliantly Vmbrys activities as a British agent:
He was a useful source of information and had the ear of the Sultan. It was
accordingly usual to pay the expenses of his journeys to Constantinople,
whence he sent back many reports on the feeling at the Porte on political af-
fairs Professor Vambry, of the University of Budapest, was one of the
greatest Turkish scholars of the nineteenth century; a strong friend of this
country and a bitter enemy of Russia.
What was it that made Vmbry such a staunch Anglophile? Aside from obvious
financial motifs referred to above, his political stance was deeply rooted in the cultu-
ral-political atmosphere of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy and the role of secula-
rized Jewry in it. To understand this, let us first quote the end of a detailed report
Vmbry wrote to the Foreign Office in June 1890:
These are my opinions on the present state and on the future of Turkey. You
Sir! And many other members of the British Government, may find fault with
me for the discrepancy between my public writings and the tenour [sic] of
this my private report, and I might be rebuked for my zeal in defending a
country and a society, whose future I am bound to paint with dim rays of
hope. I might be reproached for trying to uphold the rotten state of things

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 VMBRY AS A PUBLIC FIGURE 57

against a possibly better government but as a Hungarian by birth and an

Englishman by feelings, I have to keep in view our mutual interests, and not
any humanitarian doctrines, which may well sound from the pulpit, but have
no place in politics. As a Hungarian, I have to avert the deadly blow, with
which Russia threatens my country by her continual encroachment upon the
Balkan peninsula, and as a European, proud of Liberty and Culture, I have to
defend England, the glorious champion of Liberty and Civilisation; England,
whose position will be greatly imperilled, if Russia ever gets to
Constantinople and to Asia Minor. This purpose unites us both, You as an
Englishman and I [sic] as a friend of England.
Vmbry only followed mainstream Hungarian foreign political thinking when he
considered Russia as the greatest threat to Hungarian national existence. Russian
assistance given to Slavs in the Balkan and the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, as well
as Slav nationalism appeared detrimental to Hungarian supremacy in Hungary,
where ethnic Hungarians were in a relative minority. The Ottoman and Hungarian
elites felt they had shared interests in keeping Slav nationalism at bay. The Hungar-
ian political elites nightmare was the Russian intervention of 18481849 when
Hungarian nationalist aspirations were suppressed with the help of Russian arms,
while the Ottomans had by then a quarter of a millennium long struggle against
Russias territorial aspirations and her help given to Ottoman Slavs or Greeks. The
lesson for most of the Hungarian political elite was that Hungary with the supremacy
of ethnic Hungarians could only be preserved within a larger political unit, i.e. the
Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. This is what led to the Austro-Hungarian Pact of
1867, better known as the Austro-Hungarian Ausgleich. As the quotation above
illustrates, Realpolitik made the status quo with the Ottoman Empire in it acceptable
for Vmbry, a secularized Hungarian liberal, who considered the Ottoman Empire
backward and despotic. His Russophobia, Anglophilia and Turkophilia can thus best
be contextualized in Hungarian liberal nationalism.
Here it is in place to mention Vmbrys Jewishness. 1867 was not only the year
when the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy was born but also when the Jewish Emanci-
pation Act was passed by the Hungarian Parliament. This law provided the frame-
work for a unique economic, political and cultural boom, the success of which was
largely the result of the cooperation of the Hungarian nobility taking positions in the
administration while Hungarian Jewry occupying economic and intellectual life.
And this is where we can connect Vmbry the scholar and Vmbry the public
figure or British agent. Vmbry was the founder of Turkology in Hungary in an age
when the institutionalization of Hungarian academe was consolidated. Turkology
was conceived as belonging to the study of Hungarian ethnogenesis and linguistic
history, and as such, it was considered part of the national sciences, which, in turn,
formed an integral part of Hungarian national consciousness. For secularized Jews
like Vmbry, the espousal of Hungarian nationalism meant the promise of integra-
tion into society and liberation from an ostracized community.

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58 F. CSIRKS G. FODOR

Here we must mention Vmbrys attitude to religion in general and Islam in

particular. He was a classical Orientalist, studying the Orient and Islam, which he
considered backward and despotic primarily because of Islam. As a secular intellec-
tual, he was convinced that the only solution for the Islamic world was Westerniza-
tion. Even Turkology might be thought to be part of this line of thinking. As a
secular paradigm in place of the premodern religious framework, it offers ethnic,
racial or linguistic identity, corresponding to a new, secular modernity.
Vmbrys political and scholarly pursuits are two facets of the Hungarian
Jewish intellectual of the late 19th century. With his Russophobia and British orien-
tation Vmbry tried to protect national progress, and his work as a Jewish Hunga-
rian Turkologist also provided Hungarian national thinking with ammunition. He
was aware that the end of multinational empires, the Austro Hungarian as well as the
Ottoman, would greatly jeopardize his world.

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 VMBRY AS A PUBLIC FIGURE 59

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