Arminius Vambery was born as Armin or
hermann Bamberger in present day Hungray. He was born to
a Jewish Family but looking over the histories there is a
strong possinility that he converted to Islam. Vambery
was a prolific writer and traveler. He was a spy and
agent provaceteur for the British
Vambery is perhaps more noted today for telling Bram
Stoker the Dracula Vampire legend and for being the model
for Professor Abraham Van Helsing Dracula's
nemisis.
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One of the secret service's first
foreign agents - before MI6 was
established - was Arminius Vambery,
professor of oriental languages at the
Budapest university at the end of the
19th century. Traveler, translator and
adventurer, he is said to have introduced
Stoker to the Dracula legend during a
dinner at London's Beefsteak Club in
1890.
His putative usefulness for the British
was that he had the ear of the sultan of
Turkey, "your friend in
Constantinople", as his controller
in London described him. |
He provided information
about the weakening Ottoman empire and its
relations with the Austro-Hungarian empire and
Russia at the time of what Keith Hamilton, a
Foreign Office historian, yesterday called a
"new round in the Great Game, the
Anglo-Russian struggle for power in Asia".
The papers include letters to Vambery from his
Foreign Office handlers, though none of his
replies. One, dated 1893, refers to concern in
the Commons about the Turkish treatment of
Armenians. "Our humanitarian zealots, like
our missionaries, are politically inconvenient,
but they are not to be suppressed", Vambery
was told.
In 1897, the Foreign Office expressed concern
about the sultan's "manoeuvres for the
encouragement of Musselman [Muslim] agitation in
India and Afghanistan".
Vambery was always after money and most of the
Foreign Office's messages to him refer to
arrangements for sending him batches of Ł50, or
Ł120 in bank notes. Eventually he was given a
fixed annuity of Ł140 plus a pension, despite
the view of Lord Salisbury, the Conservative
foreign secretary, that a lot of what Vambery had
to say was "alarmist" and "had
done us more harm than good". Gill Bennett,
the Foreign Office chief historian, described him
yesterday as "a sort of near eastern
pimp".
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VÁMBÉRY. ARMIN (1832- ), Hungarian
Orientalist and traveler, was born of humble parentage at
Duna-Szerdahely, a village on the island of Shutt, in the
Danube, on the 19th of March 1832. He was educated at the
village school until the Age of twelve, and owing to
congenital lameness had to walk with crutches. At an
early age he showed remarkable aptitude for acquiring
languages, but straitened circumstances compelled him to
earn his own living. After being for a short lime
apprentice to a ladies' tailor, he became tutor to an
innkeeper's son. He next entered the untergymnasium
of St Georgen, and proceeded thence to Pressburg.
Meanwhile he supported himself by teaching on a very
small scale, but his progress was such that at sixteen he
had a good knowledge of Hungarian, Latin, French and
German, and was rapidly acquiring English and the
Scandinavian languages, and also Russian, Serbian and
other Slavonic tongues. At the age of twenty he had
obtained sufficient knowledge of Turkish to lead him to
go to Constantinople, where he set up as teacher of
European languages, and shortly afterwards became a tutor
in the house of Pasha Hussein Daim. Under the influence
of his friend and instructor, the Mullah Ahmed Effendi,
he became, nominally at least, a full Osmanli, and
entering the Turkish service, was afterwards secretary to
Fuad Pasha. After spending six years in Constantinople,
where .he published a Turkish-German Dictionary and
various linguistic works, and where he acquired some
twenty Oriental languages and dialects, he visited
Teheran; and then, disguised as a dervish, joined a band
of pilgrims from Mecca, and spent several months with
them in rough and squalid travel through the deserts of Asia.
He succeeded in maintaining his disguise, and on
arriving at Khiva went safely through two audiences of
the khan. Passing Bokhara, they reached Samarkand, where
the emir, whose suspicions were aroused, kept him in
audience for a full half-hour; but he stood the test so
well that the emir was not only pleased with " Resid
Effendi" (Vambery's assumed name), but gave him
handsome presents. He then reluctantly turned back by way
of Herat, where he took leave of the dervishes, and
returned with a caravan to Teheran, and subsequently, in
March 1864, through Trebizond and Erzurum to Constantinople.
By the advice of Prokesch-Osten and Eötvös, he paid a
visit in the following June to London; there his daring
adventures and linguistic triumphs made him the lion of
the day. In the same year he published his Travels in Central
Asia. In connection with this work it must be remembered
that Vámbéry could write down but a few furtive notes
while with the dervishes, and dared not take a single
sketch; but the weird scenes, with their misery and
suffering, were so strongly impressed on his memory that
his book is convincing by its simplicity, directness and
evidence of heroic endurance. Vámbéry also called the
attention of politicians to the movements of Russia in Central
Asia, and aroused much general interest in that question.
From London he went to Paris, and he notes in his
Autobiography that the Parisians were much more
interested in his strange manner of travelling than in
the travels themselves. He had an interview with Napoleon
III., who failed to impress him " as the great man
which the world in general considers him." Returning
to Hungary, he was appointed professor of Oriental
languages in the university of Budapest: there he settled
down, contributing largely to periodicals, and publishing
a number of books, chiefly in German and Hungarian. His
travels have been translated into many languages, and his
Autobiography wrs written in English. Amongst the best
known of his works, besides those alluded to, are
Wanderings and Adventures :i Persia (1867); Sketches of
Central Asia (1868); History ej Bokhara (1873); Manners
in Oriental Countries (1876); Primitive Civilization of
the, Turko- Tatar People ( 18 79) • Origin of the
Magyars (1882); The Turkish People (1885); and Western
Culture in Eastern Lands (1906). Encyclopaedia
Britannica 1911
VAMBERY, ARMINIUS. A Hungarian
linguist and Orientalist, died September 15, 1913. He was
born in Duna-Szerdahely, Hungary, of Jewish parents in
1832. After studying privately and at the University of
Presburg, he went to Constantinople to study Turkish life
.and language. There he earned his living by reciting
Turkish and Persian poems in the coffee houses, and by
teaching languages. In time his .abilities gained for him
an entrance in the •Ottoman society. His interest in
languages led to a journey to Khiva, Bokhara, and
Samarkand. He had already been made a corresponding
member of the Hungarian Academy of •Sciences, and in
1861 this body voted to him 1000 florins on condition
that he should go into the interior of Asia and
investigate the affinities of the Magyar tongue. The next
few years were spent in Persia and other Oriental
countries. On his return to Hungary he was received with
a coolness which was due chiefly to his humble birth and
the fact that he was a Jew. On account of this, he went
to London in 1864. His account of his travels was a great
success, and was afterwards translated into fourteen
European and Oriental languages. On his appointment as
professor of Oriental languages in the University of
Budapest, he returned to Hungary and published a number
of books on linguistic and Asiatic subjects. He made
periodical visits to Constantinople, becoming in late
years an adviser of the Sultan Abdul Hamid ; and he made
repeated visits to England, where he lectured. He took a
strong anti-Russian attitude toward the Far Eastern
question, especially in reference to what he declared to
be a steady advance of Russia toward the frontiers of
India. His published writings include Travels in Central
Asia (1864); Sketches of Central Asia (1867); The Central
Asia Question (1874); Arminius Vambery, his Life and
Adventures (1883); The Coming Struggle for India (1885);
The Story of My Struggles; Western Culture in Eastern
Lands (1906). Also several works relating to literature,
ethnography, and the linguistics of Central Asia.
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