!!!Hammer-Purgstall, Joseph Freiherr von

b. Graz (Styria), June 9, 1774, 
d. Vienna, Nov. 23, 1856, orientalist. Court interpreter, ambassador 
in the Orient, especially in Constantinople, from 1807 in the Imperial 
Office in Vienna. greatly respected as an expert on the customs of the 
Islamic parts of the Orient. His magazine "Fundgruben des Orients" (6 
vols., 1809-1818) and his imitations of Oriental poetry ("Diwan des 
Hafis", 1812 and others) introduced medieval Oriental literature to 
Europe and inspired J. W. von Goethe's "West-oestlicher Diwan". Famous 
for his history of the Ottoman empire, "Geschichte des Osmanischen 
Reiches" (10 vols., 1827-1833) and the award-winning "Ueber die innere 
Laenderverwaltung unter dem Chalifate" ("On the Administration of the 
Interior of the Califate", 1835). Supported the foundation of the  
Austrian Academy of Sciences in Vienna and became the Academy's first 
president (1847-1849). The Austrian Orient society "Oesterreichische 
Orient-Gesellschaft H.-P." is named after him. It was founded in 1959 
by A. Weikert to foster cultural relations with the Near East and to 
attend to the needs of university students from the Near East studying 
in Austria.

!Further Works
Encyklopaedische Uebersicht der Wissenschaften des 
Orients aus 7 arabischen, persischen and tuerkischen Werken 
uebersetzt, 2 vols., 1804; Geschichte der osmanischen Dichtkunst, 4 
vols., 1827-1835; Literaturgeschichte der Araber, 7 vols., 1850.

!Literature
W. Bietak, Gottes ist der Orient, 1945; C. Bucher, J. v. 
H.-P., doctoral thesis, Vienna 1949; S. Reichl, H.-P. Auf den 
romantischen Pfaden eines oesterreichischen Orientforschers, 1973.



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