My writings published on Poemas del río Wang (in English and several other languages as well – see the links for more):

From the blood of the youth
A translation and some background to a popular Persian ballad (از خون جوانان Az khun-e javânân) that still sounds actual today, just as at the time when it was written and composed by the poet and musician 'Âref Qazvini during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, more than a hundered years ago.

Another ghost of Istanbul
Another ghost sign from Istanbul, this time around the Grand Bazaar, in the Tarakçılar (Comb Sellers) Street, where a multilingual sign advertises the former shop of Mr. Âghiah and his sons in Greek, French and Ottoman Turkish ̵ the latter written in Armenian, Ottoman Turkish (Arabic) and – a unique sight even in Istanbul – Hebrew script.

Christmas in Kashan
Christmas? In Kashan?? At the edge of the Iranian desert?? But the title is no mistake, there was a Christmas in Kashan as well, at least once. And guess what, one of the participants was Hungarian, Gergely Béldi de Uzon, the last vice-consul to Tehran of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, who had to travel through wartime Persia and wrote a diary about his journey.

Buda Castle watch
An Ottoman "cemetery", rather a lieu du mémoire, on the southern slope of the Castle Hill of Buda, just below the Great Rondella. The ornated Baroque-style gate of the former Zeughaus or Arsenal of Buda Castle, a survivor of the fin de siècle reconstruction works by Alajos Hauszmann. Two stories from the Buda Castle, illustrated with photographs taken in January 2021.

Ghosts of Istanbul
The Kumbaracı yokuşu, that is, "Bombardier descent" runs up into the always crowded İstiklal Avenue at its end near the sea. In this narrow street, once the heart of the European quarter stands one of the last witnesses to Old istanbul that disappeared almost a century ago. The house still displays the former shop of a Greek furniture merchant in French, Greek and Ottoman Turkish written in Armenian script.

The teardrop
Though J. R. R. Tolkien is known as a writer and myth-maker in particular, whenever he had the time, he painted and draw as well. As an amateur artist, he worked on his drawings and illustrations with the same passion and meticulousness with which he created his Middle Earth.

The last annexation
From the 8 Döbrentei St., Budapest to the island of Ada Kale. In the house built by Alajos Hauszmann spent his last years Zoltán Medve, the retired lord-lieutenant of Krassó-Szörény County, who performed the last annexation of Hungary before the Great War: on 12 May 1913 he annexed the island of Ada Kale, which became a popular holiday destination of that time since the occupation in 1878.

False friend
Truly it must have been a historic moment, the culmination of the multiculturalism of „the happy times of peace,” when the first post office opened in the Albanian mountain town of Ilnicë, among the picturesque mountains of the Balkans, not far from today’s Macedonian border. And what a post office! With a bilingual, Czech and Serbian stamp, and with the two-tailed lion instead of the two-headed Austrian imperial or Albanian royal eagles. All this in 1910! But was it truly like this? In other words, how a wrongly identified postage stamp happens to be under the hammer and what does Google have to do with all of this?

Synagogue under the ground
Once a synagogue stood in the Buda Castle from the 15th century onward until the siege of 1686 when it was completely destroyed, together with most of the community that used it. The building's remains still can be found underground; since 2016 at least a memorial plaque highlights the place of the synagogue, which would be certainly one of the most important sites of medieval Hungarian Jewish history – a partial reconstruction and turning it into a proper memorial site is only a matter of political will and money.
    Published also in the Budapest journal (in Hungarian), with minor changes.

Ghost sea
Hiking in the Buda Mountains at the end of December. When you reach above of the fog line, you enter another dimension – uncharted waters, undreamed shores – as if the ghost of the late Pannonian Sea was about to reconquer its former basin. The hilltops become islands and peninsulas, the lookout towers on their tops are lighthouses in the slowly rolling embrace of the sunlit ghost sea. The black pines, artificially populated on the bald south-west side of the dolomite hill, recall Chinese ink wash paintings as their groups emerge from the mist lingering among them.

Turkish Coffee Evenings
A report on the December 2014 event ("Hungarians and Turkish – through each other's eyes") of the Turkish Coffee Evenings, a grassroots initiated programme series (sadly ceased since then) and an interview with the starters and organizers of the Evenings, Ágnes Tóth and Ildikó Rüll.

Persian travel sketches (together with Tamás Sajó)
Count Fedor Karacsay is a less-known figure of Hungarian-Persian relations, though he had crucial part in reforming the 19th century Perisan army in which he even held the rank of a General. His voyage to the East is hardly documented, though: we knoe only from one of his letters that his interest in ancient Hungarian history played a part in his voyage to Iran. Thus, the album presented in this post, containing Karacsay's drawings from Trabzon to Khorasan, can be considered a very important piece. It appeared briefly at an auction in December 2015 in Rome and then disappeared again in a private collection – so this is the only report of it (with images) so far.

Dissolving: The wild boar    ::  featured also on mesa revuelta
The boar's supposed or real role in the death of Miklós Zrínyi is well-known. But we have knowledge of boar hunts more fortunate from the time of Zrínyi's predecessors in his office: Mátyás Geréb, the ban of Croatia, Dalmatia and Slavonia was saved by a nobleman, János Cseh during a boar hunt in the Croatian forests, as it is told – and the very act of killing the boar is depicted – in the grant of arms of János Cseh from 1514.

All Souls' Day
I found the hitherto unknown diary of Ensign Elemér Tóth, written from the Hungarian Jászberény to the Russian Budyonny between 21 October and 4 December 1942 in an auction. While the whole diary is still being prepared for publication, we publish here an excerpt from 2 November. The sensitive description is unexpectedly paired with a photo, taken in the same place by war correspondent Tamás Konok.

Farewell to Mount Ararat
A report on the catalogue of the joint exhibition by the Budapest History Museum and the National Széchényi Library on the Hungarian Armenian culture, Far away from Mount Ararat and on the guided tour accompanying the presentation of the catalogue.

Mutations
The Mixoparthenos, this being with a female upper body and a snake-like lower body was the ancestor mother to the Scythians, at least according to Herodotus. Already in the antiquity, she became the symbol of th Bosporan Kingdom that embraced the Greek colonies along the northern Black Sea coast and having a mixed, Greek-Scythian-Thracian culture. Since then, she ended up on the logo of Starbucks. – This post was the top story of BBC Culture Best of the Web for August 2013.

Colonial
Walking in Prague, one will not necessarily see the signs of Ajvaz’s "other city" (five days are too few to that), but ghost signs still can be found. Just like the one discussed here, a ghost sign of a koloniál, a grocery shop on the Small Side (Malá strana), not far from the corner of the Újezd and the Petřinska.

Peace and conflict
Slow, round-shaped seals are hiding between the pages of library books, like fossils between rock layers, witnesses to the prosperity and transformation of remote, exotic and unlikely geologic eras. A copy from the Library of the Prison and House of Detention of Nagyfa, Hungary.

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Beside the writings, I held two lectures in the Studiolum Open University series, a series of lectures in Hungarian held by Tamás Sajó during the Covid pandemic. The recordings can be found at the page dedicated to the lectures.

My lectures at the Studiolum Open University:

The Persian classical (Dastgâh) music
Iranian music had a huge influence on the music cultures of the surrounding regions: its history is a history of interactions as well, from medieval Europe, through the Steppe region to China. In this lecture this music culture is discussed from the vague beginnings until the present day. Beside the historical overview I will focus on the Persian so-called classical (more precisely, Dastgâh) music of today, whch is equally sophisticated as European classical music. We will discuss its know origins and its main features and instruments as well as its most important performers, together with a lot of examples and my own recordings.

The Ottoman conquest of Hungary
The period of Ottoman conquest was a decisive one in the history of Hungary, nevertheless, its culture disappeared almost without any trace. In this lecture we will discuss what can be reconstructed from the cultural history of this period. What the Ottoman conquerors considered themselves and the conquered land? Who were they exactly? What was the veryday life like to Christians and Jews? The traveller Evliya Çelebi certainly visited Hungary, but did so indeed Eflatun, that is, Platon as well? And what did İskender, that is Alexander the Great do in Esztergom?