Translation

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TRANSLATION

Scholars working under the sponsorship of Muslim patrons undertook the translation of works on Greek philosophy and scientific learning and transmitted them to the West. An early and particularly fertile center for translation was Jundi-Shapur in Khuzistan, southeast of Baghdad. There the Bukhtishu?, a family of physicians at the court of the caliph, became energetic translators of Greek works on medical matters. Hunayn ibn Ishaq (808–873), based in Baghdad, translated the medical as well as ethical and philosophical works of Galen, which were preserved in Arabic long after the originals were lost. Arabic translations preserved the works of other Greek writers, such as Euclid, Rufus of Ephesus, Nicolaus of Damascus, Porphyry, and Proclus. Hunayn bequeathed his translation legacy to his son, Ishaq ibn Hunayn (d. 910). Hunayn and his school created a genuine home in the Arabic language for a rich repertoire of new ideas and concepts. Most of the major translators were Christian, with the possible exception of a Jewish scholar named Marsajawayh, who translated from the Syriac, and Thabit b. Qurrah (c. 834–901), a Sabian from Harran.

Translation was almost entirely devoted to scientific, medical, and philosophical works. Philosophical texts were paraphrased and included commentaries for Arabic students. Simplified adaptations of the works of Plato and Aristotle were known in Arabic. Another area of great intellectual interest was Neo-Platonism, particularly the works of the Egyptian Plotinus (c. 200–269 c.e.), and of his disciple Porphyry (233–301).

Yet it would be wrong to overemphasize the impact of Greek ideas on Islam's religious life and culture. Only a small circle of educated elites was shaped by the influence of Greek intellectual ideas. The Qur?an survived the critical Greek encounter to endure as the great devotional and missionary text of the religion, conveying the sounds and tones of the original sacred Arabic of Scripture to multitudes of adherents down the centuries and scattered well beyond the Arab heartlands.

Mission and Translation

In the course of its worldwide expansion and cross-cultural transmission, Islam has maintained a remarkable consistency in promoting the nontranslatable status of the Qur?an. That may account in part for the relative unity of faith and practice among Muslims who are otherwise characterized by an extraordinary diversity of race, language, culture, and social status. Without an institutional central authority to enforce doctrine and to adjudicate the affairs of believers, Islam has nevertheless continued to enjoy a degree of solidarity that is belied by its organizational decentralization. It happens that only a minority of the world's one billion Muslims is Arab in language and culture, yet for all Muslims the Holy Qur?an in the original Arabic is divine oracle. Rather than impede the spread of Islam, this fact has been the basis of the appeal of the religion in societies even beyond the Arab heartland. The language of scripture has been a major force in establishing boundaries and shaping identity for new communities in Islam.

The Qur?an bears witness to its own unique and manifest status as Arabic speech (12: 1–3; 16: 105; 41: 41–42), a celestial discourse designed for repeated recitation "whereat shiver the skins of those who fear their Lord; then their skins and their hearts soften to the remembrance of God" (39: 23). The Qur?an as the "essence of divine speech" is sublime and wise guidance for the faithful, and is preserved in its Arabicness with God as such (43: 3).

The transmission of Islam has been accompanied by adaptations in local practice and understanding, and, accordingly, the Qur?an has been appropriated to reflect new situations, whether as divine oracle, rule book, breviary, vade mecum, periapt, or as universal template. There being no rival versions of the Qur?an, Muslims possess in their scripture a single and unvarying standard of faith and devotion, and a tangible symbol of the oneness of the umma (community of believers). Through Islam's worldwide expansion the Arabic of scripture became, according to H. A. R. Gibb, "a world language and the common literary medium of all Muslim peoples" (1974, p. 37).

Although proficiency in the language of Scripture is the preserve of a small circle of specialists, nevertheless the task of learning the holy book by rote memorization is the sacred duty of all Muslims, scholar and sundry alike, because only that way may Muslims observe the obligatory five daily periods of worship known as salat. Even though there are translations of the Qur?an, they are invalid for salat for which the sacred Arabic has been instituted as a prerequisite, a rule that gives translations no canonical merit in the central religious rites.

A potent connection exists between the Arabic script and Islam's sacrosanct view of language. One tradition speaks of the human face as God's image, of language as the mark of humanity, and the twenty-eight letters of the Arabic script as containing the essence of that contained in language: the mysteries of God, humanity, and eternity. Echoes of such reverence for the sacred Arabic can be found in mosque calligraphy composed of Qur?anic verses and the names of God, the Prophet, the shahada (profession of faith), and the early caliphs. Calligraphic art has spread widely, and with it an iconographic reverence for the sacred script. Muslim devotions involve rhythmic chanting (tartil) of the Qur?an.

The widespread iconographic reverence for the language and script of the Qur?an led travelers in the far regions of the Islamic world to comment on the prominence given to study of the Qur?an and to its use in canonical worship. Thus did Ibn Battuta recount how Muslim Africans were punctilious in mosque attendance and zealous in learning the Qur?an, testifying that parents "put their children in chains if they show any backwardness in memorizing it, and they are not set free until they have it by heart." Dr. Edward Wilmot Blyden (1832–1912), a pan-African visionary of West Indian origin, made a close study of Islam and Muslim life, noting that even at the margins of the Muslim world the untranslated Qur?an held a particularly high position. He said he saw evidence of the Holy Book exerting a powerful influence on nonliterate populations, providing a ground of unity for the disparate tribes and a sentiment of loyalty that promoted a sense of common identity. The words of the sacred book, he testified, were held in the greatest reverence and esteem. Although for many Muslim Africans the words of the Arabic Qur?an were little understood, they possessed still great beauty and music, a subtle and indefinable charm "incomprehensible to those not acquainted with the language in which the Koran was written."

Translation, Reform, and Revolution

The tradition of orthopraxy that a uniform Qur?an promoted, and that was important where caliphal authority was weak or unknown, was difficult to maintain among acephalous Muslim populations such as existed in North Africa. For more than three centuries after the introduction of Islam, the Berbers there remained poorly instructed in the faith and remained, therefore, susceptible to splintering and heresy. To remedy such defects, the Almoravid movement, launched in 1056, sought to assemble the dispersed Berber tribes under Islamic rule in forms that were frankly outlandish: the Qur?an and the sunna, for example, were discounted as too demanding for the simple and ignorant, their place now taken by a culture of strict discipline on the masses and unquestioning obedience to the leader. Religious illiteracy became even more conspicuous from the high expectations raised by Almoravid power.

The illiteracy aggravated the moral delinquency belonging with the fictitious nature of power, and that finally provoked a reaction. An idea had been growing steadily that it was necessary to extend to the Berber tribesmen the unifying dividends that the Ash?arite revolution had achieved in the eastern provinces of the caliphate. By making use of reason to defend revelation, Ash?arism repositioned Muslim intellectual life after its encounter with Greek ideas by stressing God's omnipotence (qadar) and by rejecting the naturalist inferences of anthropomorphism (tajsim).

Transferred to North Africa, these Ash?arite ideas would have a major impact on religion, state, and society. In the circumstances of political fragmentation and religious syncretism that characterized North Africa in the eleventh century, a movement of reaction and revolution erupted to channel pent up forces through a political outlet under a charismatic leader. This leader was Ibn Tumart (d. 1130), founder of the militant Almohad (al-muwahhidun) counterrevolution against the lackadaisical Almoravids.

Ibn Tumart assumed power and had the Qur?an translated into his native Berber; he ordered the call to prayers (adhan) to be given in Berber; the Friday sermon (khutba) likewise was delivered in his mother tongue; and he required the clerics, the ulema, to know and function in that language. He arranged for his own theological writings to be circulated in Berber as well as Arabic. Such translation activity stimulated sentiments of local nationalism, though it conflicted with Ibn Tumart's own aims of integrating Berber Islam into the unified Ash?arite and Ghazalian tradition that he so much admired. Undertaking his ambitious translation enterprise as a facet of the changes he wished to see introduced in Muslim North Africa, Ibn Tumart ended by producing a variation so colorful and so rare as to amount to a serious rupture with Qur?an and sunna.

The nationalist impulse of language reform and religious renewal converged again much later, during the Ottoman Empire. By the late nineteenth century this linguistic nationalism was gaining a foothold within and without. Students from the empire returned from their studies in European universities with a heightened sense of national identity. Works on Turkish language and grammar, some the result of European Orientalist scholarship, were coming into general circulation. Works in European languages, particularly French, were translated into Turkish. Hungarian and Polish refugees, many of whom converted to Islam, wrote in French and Turkish. Russian Turks brought a strong sense of national identity, infusing the Turkish language with a sense of historical destiny. These impulses coalesced into the Turkish Society, founded in Istanbul in 1908. The society was dedicated to objectives that were scholarly as well as cultural, including the advancement of language and literature. As part of its aggressive program of secularization, the new political authorities set about reforming religious life and practice. In 1929 Arabic and Persian were abolished as subjects of instruction in schools to facilitate the teaching and spread of Turkish. A reorganization of religious schools and mosques was undertaken, with the requirement that the language of worship be Turkish, and that all prayers and sermons be in the national language, and not Arabic. Measures were adopted to translate the Qur?an and the hadith into Turkish, with money voted for the scheme in 1932. In that year for the first time the adhan resounded from minarets in Turkish.

Beginning in 1928 with the adoption of a new Latin alphabet to replace Arabic, a vigorous, if at times overenthusiastic, language reform program was undertaken. The Turkish language was purged of its Arabic and Persian borrowings and grammatical features to bring it closer to national aspirations. Although some of the excesses of this linguistic purge were later reversed, the language reforms achieved the goal of closing a crucial gap between written and spoken Turkish, giving birth to a new sense of national identity. The attempts to carry the translation efforts into the mosque failed because of clerical opposition. A similar fate befell attempts in India to translate the Islamic canonical rites into Hindi, in that case also for reasons of trying to bring Islam into line with the national sentiment.

Translation and Cross-Cultural Consolidation

These large-scale national reforms aimed at shifting people's devotion to the sacred script and language are testimony to the enduring influence of the Qur?an on the habits and customs of Muslim peoples. Yet a different impulse has worked in translation to fashion in people a sense of identity and to provide boundary markers. This is the case, for example, with Swahili in East Africa and Hausa and Fulfulde in West Africa. Swahili verse and prose literature have functioned to impress on the fabric of popular life images of Islam drawn from the Arabic classics: accounts of the Prophet in popular praise songs; studies of the origins of the Islamic state; stories of the caliphs and the Prophet's companions; devotional literature tied to the religious calendar; exegetical works expounding the Qur?an; and manuals designed for exchange and study in shops, markets, and private homes. Swahili has thus worked in favor of Islam's penetration into coastal and transient populations of East Africa.

Hausa verse and prose have had a comparable effect on the Hausa people of Nigeria and beyond. Early in the nineteenth century an era of revolution and reform produced an environment conducive to the large-scale use of written Hausa in Arabic script. That in turn inspired a corresponding pan-Islamic sensibility among scholars. Writers in Hausa appealed to the Arabic classics, including the literature produced during the Abbasid caliphate, to reform local practice and to implement the religious canon. The reformers drew upon the Qur?an, the hadith, the history, and the legal and biographical traditions to create structures and institutions in their part of the Muslim world, and the gains they made became a permanent part of the life of the people.

For its part, Fulfulde enjoyed a long and distinguished role as the language of instruction, catechism, and exegesis in Qur?an school and beyond. The educational syllabus was based on a four-stage process: introducing the Arabic alphabet (jangugol), writing (windugol), Scriptural exegesis in Fulfulde (firugol), and higher studies (fennu; Ar., ?ilm awfaq). Religious catechism was conducted in Fulfulde. All this linguistic activity laced Fulbe national feeling with a heightened sense of Islamic exceptionalism. Beginning with the reforms of Karamokho Alfa of Futa Jallon in 1727, and ?Uthman dan Fodio of northern Nigeria in 1804, the Fulbe became energetic sponsors of reform in West African Islam and the self-acclaimed defenders of Sunni orthodoxy. Under Fulbe hegemony, the language issue acquired a central status: the accommodationists among the local Muslim clerics were decried as ?ulama? al-su?, the "venal clerics," and charged with allowing scriptural standards to slip and political corruption to spread. Literacy in Arabic, however limited, became a criterion of reform and renewal. Such limited literacy represented precious intellectual capital in marginal Muslim societies, and the Fulbe reformers deployed it to great effect. Literate clerics, accordingly, became the vanguard of change in state and society.

It is not the case, however, that all literate clerics adopted the path of militancy from their privileged position as masters of Arabic. An outstanding example are the Jakhanke Muslim clerics of Senegambia who, as a matter of principle, have, from medieval times, rejected jihad as well as political co-option, and have instead adopted the methods of peaceful persuasion in their role as educational specialists. They have introduced the Arabic of scripture and tradition in their schools by means of local languages, adapting the grammatical concepts and special vocabulary of the Qur?an to local usage. They created in West Africa a culture of religious and political moderation in spite of a bruising era of confrontation under an anticlerical French colonial administration. At the hands of the pacific clerics, translation assured the renewal of Islam and its continuing vitality as a pillar of civil society without the compromise of armed intervention or state enforcement.