The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-10-27
ARMINIUS VAMBERY. THE
 WORLDS GREAT FORIENTALIST

! Buda Pesth, October 2s-(special)- Prof. Arminius yambery is happy; he has discovered and celebrated his birth day. Vambery is the greatest of orien- talists in history; the speaker and writer of 12 Asiatic tongues and nine European; the fierce Ruscophobe and fiercer Anglo phile; the most brilliant, most learned, boldest and vainest of European mortals. He is the author of a whole library of books of philology and travel and he is the only man that has ever lived who could pass for a Turk in Stamboul, a Persian in Teheran, a Tekke Turcoman Orenberg steppes. Yet although he boast ed of knowing so much until lately Prof. Arminius Vambery was ignorant of his birthday.
 When years ago he paid a visit 10 old Queen Victoria she bid him put his name in her birthday book. ''I don't know it, T" said Vambery. And he wrote the day of the visit, March 19. and added guess wise the year 1892. And last March the old man celebrated his S0th birthday, and got cables and letters from all Europe s great, which gratified immensely a vanity which considerably exceeds his vast learn ing. And now he has discovered that he was born in September, and not in March, 1892, and alas, that he cannot have a sec- ond celebration.
 Vambery's history is. the greatest of exploration and scholarship romances. He was born. as son of a pious Jew, at Szerdahely on the Danubian island of Schuett. His real patronymIc is Bam- berger, for his father came from Bam- berg, in Bavaria; and "Vambery" is a Magyarized form. Jews in those days had bad time; and the little Jews Vam- bery worse time. He was set to pre- pare for living as tailors apprentice, and he got no other education But by the time he was IS he had taught himself four European languages and Turkish and he had risen from tailors apprentice to be private teacher of ingustlcs Hav- ing Magyarized himself. he turned to the Orient as the source of the Magyar peo- pie. And he next mastered Persian, and soon had four eastern languages at his command.
 With few gulden in his pocket vam- bery set out to seek fame and fortune in Stamboul. Dressed in rags he earned a living reciting Turkish and Persian poems in Stamboul coffee houses When he recited Turkish the Turks took him for Turk, and when he recIted Persian, Persians embraced him as a compatriot. Then he be gan to rise Rich Turks took nm lnto tHelf houses as lnSuuct0r, he became Vambery Effendi: and next Res ched Effendf; and he flew upward 80 rapidly that had he stuck to Turkey he might have become grand vizier But he did not stick.
 In Stamboul he learned more Oriental dialects Armed with six of them his adventurous temper drove him to explore the then unknown and barbarous Central Asia. The Hungarian Academy of Science allowed him s4o0 to cover all ex- penses It was enough for vambery In the guise of d Paige Dervish,' after ward as Hadji, he set out from Constan- tinople to Mecca and Persia; and went thence to Bochara. Samarcand, Khiva, Afghanistan and back through North Per sio. He kept up his disguise of holy man, and managed to deceive natives who, had they discovered him, would have sent him to death.
 Vambery starved, broled and shiv- cred and was almost eaten alive, and more than once. on the point of detec- tion, he took out of his rags the strych- nine pills which were his only safeguard against torture. He ate nothing at night for fear that eating would make him dream. and that he would betray his se- cret by muttering in a European lan- guage. His greatest peril was when he entered fanatical Herat in troop of beggars. and was recognized by the Khan as an European. Later when taken pris- oner by British soldiofs. the Khan told how he pierced Vambery's disguise. Some of his soldier musicians were trying to play European airs. The 20 beggars with vambery listened stolidly, and ob- viously could make nothing of the music.