جوزيف فان هامر برجشتال حياته وسيرته (1)

المستشرق النمساوي جوزيف فان هامر برجشتال حياته وسيرته (1)
المحاضر : الدكتور جيرهارد دينس
JOSEPH VON HAMMER-PURGSTALL His Life And Career (1)
The Lecturer : Dr. Gerhard Dienes

JOSEPH VON HAMMER-PURGSTALL, (1774-1856), was born at Gratz in 1774, and after some training in the Oriental academy of Vienna entered the Austrian diplo-matic service. He was the son of Joseph Johann von Hammer, and it was not till 1835, when he had inherited the estates of the countess of Purgstall (in Styria), that he received the title Baron von Hammer-Purgstall, by which he is generally known. His youth and early manhood were passed in the Levant, where he bent all his energies to the task of improving his acquaintance with Oriental literature, in which as early as 1796 he proved his interest by the translation of a Turkish poem. He did not again come forward as an author till 1804, when his Encyclopaedia of Oriental Learning appeared, a work whose ambitious character was so diffidently felt by its author that he feared to put his name to it. From that time there was little pause in his literary productiveness. For fifty years he wrote incessantly on the most diverse subjects, and his works were composed in most of the languages of Europe. He published numerous texts and translations of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish authors; compiled histories of Persian poetry, Turkish poetry, and Arabic literature; brought the poems of Hafiz, Mutanebbi, Baki, and Ibn-el-Fdridh within the reach of European readers; published travels in Turkey and Austria ; wrote the history of the Tatar races, the Krim Khans, the Golden Horde, the Russians, and the Ottoman Turks; formed a biogra-phical gallery of Eastern celebrities; put forth theories about every possible subject in the wide range of Oriental learning, discussing the Arabian Nights, Arab music, Mahometan theology, Egyptian papyri, gnostic coffrets, Arabic grammar, Eastern antiquities, the sect of the Assassins, the sieges of Vienna, the Knights Templars, and Spenser's sonnets, which he translated into German. Von Hammer did for Germany the same work that Sir William Jones did for England. He showed that Oriental subjects were not to be studied merely so far as they were connected with biblical theology, but were a worthy object of research for their own sake. For more than fifty years he per-sisted in introducing Eastern authors and Eastern topics to the general reader, and there was a time when no Orientalist was more widely known and admired. As Jules Mohl said—" C'était le doyen de la littérature ori-entale, le premier associé que la Société (Asiatique de Paris) ait tenu à l'honneur d'inscrire sur sa liste, et le plus zélé, le plus fertile, et le plus célèbre des hommes qui se sont voués, de nôtres temps, à la culture des lettres orientales."

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