Ignác Kúnos was a Hungarian linguist, turkologist, folklorist, a correspondent member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Hungarian Academy of Sciences

The Hungarian Academy of Sciences is the most important and prestigious learned society of Hungary. Its seat is at the bank of the Danube in Budapest.-History:...

. At his time he was one of the most recognised scholars of the Turkish folk literature

Turkish folk literature

Turkish folk literature is an oral tradition deeply rooted, in its form, in Central Asian nomadic traditions. However, in its themes, Turkish folk literature reflects the problems peculiar to a settling people who have abandoned the nomadic lifestyle...

 and Turkish dialectology

Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...

. Grand-father of George Kunos (1942) American-Hungarian neuroendocrinologist, pharmacologist.

He attended the Reformed College in Debrecen

Debrecen

Debrecen , is the second largest city in Hungary after Budapest. Debrecen is the regional centre of the Northern Great Plain region and the seat of Hajdú-Bihar county.- Name :...

, then studied linguistics at the Budapest University between 1879 and 1882. With the financial support of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and the Budapest Jewish community he spent five years in Constantinople

Constantinople

Constantinople was the capital of the Roman, Eastern Roman, Byzantine, Latin, and Ottoman Empires. Throughout most of the Middle Ages, Constantinople was Europe's largest and wealthiest city.-Names:...

 studying Turkish language and culture. In 1890 he was appointed at the Budapest University as professor of the Turkish philology. Between 1899-1919 he was the director ot the newly organized Oriental College of Commerce in Budapest. From 1919 until 1922 he held the same post at the Oriental Institute integrated into the Budapest University of Economics

Budapest University of Technology and Economics

The Budapest University of Technology and Economics , in hungarian abbreviated as BME, English official abbreviation BUTE, is the most significant University of Technology in Hungary and is also one of the oldest Institutes of Technology in the world, having been founded in 1782.-History:BME is...

, and then from 1922 he taught Turkish linguistic at the university. In the summer of 1925 and 1926, invited by the Turkish government, he was professor at the Ankara

Ankara University

Ankara University is a public university in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey. It was the first higher education institution founded in the Turkish Republic....

 and Istanbul Universities

Istanbul Bilgi University

Istanbul Bilgi University is a private, non-profit university in Istanbul, Turkey. It was actually established in 1994 under the name ISIS , but its name was changed to Istanbul Bilgi University with the foundation of the school on June 7, 1996...

, besides this in 1925 he organized the Department of Folkloristics at the Istanbul University. He died during the soviet siege of Budapest.

At the beginning of his career he mainly focused on the dialectology

Dialectology

Dialectology is the scientific study of linguistic dialect, a sub-field of sociolinguistics. It studies variations in language based primarily on geographic distribution and their associated features...

, phonological

Phonology

Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...

 and morphological

Morphology (linguistics)

In linguistics, morphology is the identification, analysis and description, in a language, of the structure of morphemes and other linguistic units, such as words, affixes, parts of speech, intonation/stress, or implied context...

 matters of the Hungarian language

Hungarian language

Hungarian is a Uralic language, part of the Ugric group. With some 14 million speakers, it is one of the most widely spoken non-Indo-European languages in Europe....

 as well as the ones of the Mordvinic languages

Mordvinic languages

The Mordvinic languages, alternatively Mordvin languages, or Mordvinian languages, are a subgroup of the Uralic languages, comprising the closely related Erzya language and Moksha language.Previously considered a single "Mordvin language",...

. Being pupil of Ármin Vámbéry

Ármin Vámbéry

Ármin Vámbéry, Arminius Vámbéry born Hermann Bamberger, or Bamberger Ármin , was a Hungarian orientalist and traveler...

, his interest was directed towards Turkish language

Turkish language

Turkish is a language spoken as a native language by over 83 million people worldwide, making it the most commonly spoken of the Turkic languages. Its speakers are located predominantly in Turkey and Northern Cyprus with smaller groups in Iraq, Greece, Bulgaria, the Republic of Macedonia, Kosovo,...

 and philology. From 1885 until 1890, during his stay in Constantinople, he traveled to Rumelia

Rumelia

Rumelia was an historical region comprising the territories of the Ottoman Empire in Europe...

, Anatolia

Anatolia

Anatolia is a geographic and historical term denoting the westernmost protrusion of Asia, comprising the majority of the Republic of Turkey...

, Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

, Palestine

Palestine

Palestine is a conventional name, among others, used to describe the geographic region between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River, and various adjoining lands....

 and Egypt

Egypt

Egypt , officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, Arabic: , is a country mainly in North Africa, with the Sinai Peninsula forming a land bridge in Southwest Asia. Egypt is thus a transcontinental country, and a major power in Africa, the Mediterranean Basin, the Middle East and the Muslim world...

. During his trip he observed and studied the characteristics of the Turkish dialects, ethnography, folk poetry and folk customs of Turkish and other local peoples. The most significant merit of him was that he collected an impressing amount of folk tales and anecdotes that were published in Hungarian as well as many other European languages.

As a recognition of his scientific results he was elected a correspondent member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences

Hungarian Academy of Sciences

The Hungarian Academy of Sciences is the most important and prestigious learned society of Hungary. Its seat is at the bank of the Danube in Budapest.-History:...

, but he also was a vice-president of the International Society for the Investigation of Central and Eastern Asia.

Works

• Turkish fairy tales and folk tales. London, 1896.
• Mundarten der Osmanen. Sankt-Petersburg, 1899.
• Schejk Sulejman efendi’s Tscagataj-osmanisches Wörterbuch. Budapest, 1902.
• Türkische Vorkserzählungen. Leiden, 1905.
• Türkische Volksmärchen aus Stambul. Leiden, 1905.
• Beiträge zum Studium der türkischen Sprache und Literatur. Leipzig & New York, 1907.
• Türkische Volksmärchen aus Ada-kale. Leipzig & New York, 1907.
• Türkisches Volksschauspiel. Leipzig, 1908.
• Forty-four Turkish fairy tales. London, Harrap, 1914, 364 p.
• Turkish fairy tales and folk tales. New York, Dover, 1969, 275 p.
• Kasantatarische Volkslieder. Hrsg. Zsuzsa Kakuk. Budapest, MTA Könyvtára, 1980, 138 p. = Keleti Tanulmányok.
• Kasantatarische Volksmärchen. Hrsg. Zsuzsa Kakuk. Budapest, MTA Könyvtára, 1989, 220 p. = Keleti Tanulmányok.
• Mischärtatarische Texte mit Wörterverzeichnis. Hrsg. Zsuzsa Kakuk. Szeged & Amsterdam, JATE & Holland, 1996, 192 p.