Armiuins Vambery, a Hungarian traveller, of Jewish parentage, born at Szerdahely, county of Presburg, in 1832. He was intended for a tailor, but studied at Presburg, Vienna, and Pesth, supporting himself in the intervals as a private teacher. He finally went in this capacity to Constantinople, where he familiarized himself with eastern languages. To acquire a knowledge of those of central Asia, he went in 1862 to Persia with the aid of the pesth academy. In the disguise of a dervish he joined in 1863 Yarkand pilgrims returning from Mecca, and in that and the followingyear he explored parts of Turkistap, visiting the cities of Khiva, Bokhara, and Samarcand. On his return to Pesth he became oriental professor at the university, which post he still holds (1876). His works include a TurkishGerman pocket dictionary (1858); "Travels in Central Asia" (1865); Cagataische Sprachstudien (1867), one of the first works written on the Turkish of the East, but the accuracy of which is contested; "Wanderings and Adventures in Persia " (1867), to which he added in 1868 "Sketches of Central Asia;" Uigurische Sprachmonvmente und das Kudathu-Bililc (1870); Magyar-toroh szohasonlatolc, a comparison of Hungarian and Turkish words (1870); "History of Bokhara or Transoxiana, from the Earliest Period down to the Present" (1873); "Central Asia and the AngloRussian Frontier Question" (1874); and "The Islam in the Nineteenth Century " (1875). His principal works were translated by himself into English, and published simultaneously in English and German, and have been translated into other languages.

Vambery is friendly to England, where his writings are very popular; but Russian and other authorities tax him with inaccuracies of statement, some of them going so far as to allege that he had never visited Samarcand and other places of which he gives elaborate descriptions. He has in press (1876) a work on the history, traditions, languages, and literatures of the various Turkish tribes in Asia and Europe.