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-- 13. _Origin of the Magyars_ in a separate volume. In different scientific articles I had already hinted at the manner in which I intended to treat this still open question. I pointed out that Árpád and his warriors who, towards the close of the ninth century founded what is now Hungary, were most certainly Turkish nomads forming a north-westerly branch of the Turkish chain of nationalities; that they pushed forward from the Ural, across the Volga, into Europe, and established in Pannonia what is now the State of Hungary. The ethnology and the language of the Magyars is a curious mixture of dialects, for the Turkish nomads during their wanderings incorporated into their language many kindred Finnish-Ugrian elements, and in the lowlands of Hungary they came upon many ethnological remains of the same original stock. All these various elements gradually amalgamated and formed the people and the language of Hungary as it is now. Considering this problematic origin, and the elasticity of philological speculation, it stands to reason that much has been written and argued in Hungary about the origin of the nation. Many different views were held, and at the time that I joined in the discussion, the theory of the Finnish-Ugrian descent of the Magyars held the upper hand. My labour, therefore, was directed against these, for on the ground of my personal experiences in the manner of living and the migrations of the Turkish nomads in general, based upon historical evidence, I endeavoured to prove the Turkish nationality of Árpád and his companions. I conceded the mixed character of the language with the reservation, however, that in the amalgamation not the Finnish-Ugrian