This had already appeared in part in a German periodical, Westermann's Monthly, and was further enlarged with sketches of family life in Turkey, Persia, and Central Asia, interspersed with personal observations on the religious and social customs of these people. As far as I know there are, besides the original German edition, a Danish and a Hungarian translation of this work, but although much read and discussed, this book has not been of much, if any, material benefit to me, beyond the honorarium paid me by the "Society of German literature." With this book I have really contributed to the knowledge of the Orient in the regions named just as with my—
11. Islam in the Nineteenth Century
I directed the attention of the reading public to those social and political reforms which our intervention and our reformatory efforts in the Moslem East have called forth; but practically both the one and the other were failures. It was not at all my intention to write a sort of defence of Islam, as was generally imagined, but I endeavoured, on the contrary, to show up the mistakes, weaknesses and prejudices which characterised this transition period, indeed I ruthlessly tore away the veil; but on the other hand I did not hesitate to lay bare our own neglects and faults. My object was to correct the judgment of Europe in regard to the Moslem society of Asia, and to point out that with patience and a little less egotism and greed we should accomplish more; that we are not yet justified in looking upon Islam as a society condemned to destruction, and in breaking the staff over it. As a purely theoretical study, perhaps also on account of my very liberal religious notions expressed therein, I have not been able to publish this book in England; hence the circle of readers was very limited, but all the more select, and I had the satisfaction of having stirred up a very serious question.
A book which, to my great surprise, had an extraordinary success was my publication in English of the—
12. Life and Adventures of Arminius Vambéry, written by Himself,
which in a very short time passed through seven editions, and was extraordinarily popular in England, America and Australia. It is in reality one of my most insignificant, unpretentious literary efforts, written at the request of my English publisher, and is by no means worthy of the reception it had. This made me realise the truth of the proverb: "Habent sua fata libelli," for the book is nothing but a recapitulation of my wanderings, including my experiences in Turkey and Persia, which were now for the first time brought before the English public. But what chiefly secured its friendly reception was a few short paragraphs about my early life, a short resumé of the first chapter of the present work, and these details from the life of a self-made man did not fail to produce an impression upon the strongly developed individuality of the Anglo-Saxon race. I am not sure how many editions it went through, but I have evident proofs of the strong hold this book had upon all ranks and classes of English-speaking people. Comments and discussions there were by the hundred, and private letters expressive of readers' appreciation kept flowing in to me from the three parts of the world.
Curiously enough this book excited interest only with the Anglo-Saxons; to this day it has not been translated in any other foreign language, not even in my Hungarian mother-tongue. Society in Eastern Europe still suffers from the old-world delusion that nobility of blood is everything, and considers that it could not possibly condescend to be edified by the experiences of a poorly-born man of obscure origin; but the Anglo-Saxon with his liberal notions revels in the story of the terrible struggles of the poor Jewish boy, the servant and the teacher, and of what he finally accomplished. This is the chief reason which made the most insignificant of my books so popular with the Anglo-Saxons, a book with which I promulgated more knowledge about Moslem Asia than with all my other works put together, more even than many highly learned disquisitions of stock-Orientalists.
I will not deny that the unexpected success of this book was my principal inducement in writing the present Autobiography.
In my various literary productions I had chiefly aimed at a diffusing of general knowledge about the Moslem East, but at home (in Hungary) I had often been reproached with absolute neglect as regards the national Magyar side of my studies. I therefore decided to publish my views about the—