510 MEMOIR OF FLEISCHER. 



Both publications proved that he had reached the goal which he had 

 been pursuing during a twelve years' preparatory period, entailing con- 

 stant hard work and manifold sacrifices. In the preface to Abulfeda 

 he deplores the fewness of his notes, and craves indulgence for himself 

 on the plea of being a hoino lectionis pauccv,menwria} paucioris, otiipau- 

 cissimi. But the character of his work is such as to invalidate all but 

 the last of the three excuses. Meantime he had accepted in 1831, a 

 position as teacher in the Kreuz high-school at Dresden. Here he re- 

 mained until 1835, when, the above-mentioned works having spread his 

 fame, he was offered a professorship at St. Petersburg, later filled by 

 Dorn. He was about to leave for Eussia, when, in the nick of time, the 

 offer of a full professorship of Oriental languages, at his own university 

 of Leipzig, reached him. He was elected on October 19, 1835, but did 

 not enter upon the duties of his position until Easter, 1836. At first 

 he was considered a member of the theological faculty, but early in the 

 next decade he was permitted, after active agitation on his own i)art, to 

 pass over to the philosophical faculty. On September 27, 1836, he mar- 

 ried Ernestine Mathilde Jiissing, of Bautzen, the daughter of Friedrich 

 Leberecht Jiissing, retired brigade judge of the royal Saxon service, 

 who lived at that time in Dresden. He was permitted to celebrate, with 

 his faithful and affectionate wife, who still survives, the fiftieth anni- 

 versary of his wedding-day, and was blessed with the joy — marred only 

 by the death of their eldest daughter — of seeing their children occupy 

 ])ositions of honor in the community. Not less happy was his domestic 

 life, than were his official and scientific undertakings. When, in 

 1846, the Royal Saxon Scientific Society was founded, he at once became 

 an active member. In 1855, he became its assistant secretary, and later, 

 secretary in chief, a position which he filled with his customary scrupu- 

 lousness until 1883. In 1860, he received an honorable call from Berlin. 

 He refused the offer, remaining faithful to his native land until his 

 death. 



When Fleischer entered upon his professorship in Leipzig, in 1836, 

 Arabic-Mohammedan studies had begun to flourish in all parts of Ger- 

 many. Between 1819 and 1829 there had been published five of the 

 Md'allaqat^ with the scholia of Zauzani, by Kosegarten, Hengstenberg, 

 Rosen nuiller, and Vullers; in 1828, the text of the Ranidsa, by Freytag; 

 between 1825 and 1831, the first six volumes of Habicht's Thousand 

 and One Nights; and in 1828^ Kosegarten^s Chrestomathy ; Frey tag's 

 Arabic Poetics (1830), and the first volume of his great lexicon (1830), 

 as well as the beginning of Ewald's Grammatica critica (1831), had es- 

 tablished the principle that the edition of texts should be prepared 

 with due regard to the laws of the language. Meantime another Ger- 

 man scholar — Frahn, in the service of the Russian Government, by his 

 Recensio (1826), had laid a scientific foundation for Islamic numismatics. 

 Dorn was beginning to assist the Petersburg investigator, and Hanimer- 

 Purgstall, unflagging, continued his magnificent work at Vienna. The 



