The correspondence of one of the outstanding personages of Islam research, Ignaz Goldziher (1850–1921), has an extraordinary value in the Oriental Collection. The over 13,000 letters written to the scholar were donated to the Academy in the arrangement of his son, Károly Goldziher.
In addition to international congresses, correspondence was the major form of scholarly communication in Goldziher's time; he discussed many questions of interest in letters he exchanged with the most prominent scholars of the period. The œuvre of the President of the Academy's Section of Linguistics and Literary Scholarship for fourteen years is still in the focus of interest and research.
Letter by Sir Denison Ross to Igaz Goldziher
(Goldziher Correspondence 36)
A rich selection of Goldziher's studies published in Hungarian was reprinted by the Oriental Collection in two volumes, Az arabok és az iszlám [The Arabs and Islam], edited with an introductory study by István Ormos (1995).
To pay homage to the 150th anniversary of Goldziher's birth the Oriental Collection organized an international conference, the proceedings of which were published in 2005 under the title Goldziher Memorial Conference (Keleti Tanulmányok - Oriental Studies 12).
