scholarly journals The Persian Translation of Arabic Aesthetics: Rādūyānī's Rhetorical Renaissance

2016 ◽  
Vol 34 (4) ◽  
pp. 339-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Gould
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Literary Theory ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Vantage Point ◽  
Persian Language ◽  
Global Study ◽  
Classical Arabic ◽  
Persian Translation

Notwithstanding its value as the earliest extant New Persian treatment of the art of rhetoric, Rādūyānī's Interpreter of Rhetoric (Tarjumān al-Balāgha) has yet to be read from the vantage point of comparative poetics. Composed in the Ferghana region of modern Central Asia between the end of the eleventh century and the beginning of the twelfth century, Rādūyānī's vernacularization of classical Arabic norms inaugurated literary theory in the New Persian language. I argue here that Rādūyānī's vernacularization is most consequential with respect to its transformation of the classical Arabic tropes of metaphor (istiʿāra) and comparison (tashbīh) to suit the new exigencies of a New Persian literary culture. In reversing the relation between metaphor and comparison enshrined in Arabic aesthetics, Rādūyānī concretized the Persian contribution to the global study of literary form.

The Pursuit of Persian: Language in Mughal Politics

1998 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-349 ◽  
Author(s):  
MUZAFFAR ALAM
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
First Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
Mughal Empire ◽  
Persian Language ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Literary Output

The Mughal literary culture has been noted for its notable achievements in poetry and a wide range of prose writings in Persian. In terms of profusion and variety of themes this literary output was also perhaps incomparable. The court's patronage has rightly been suggested as an important reason for this. This patronage, however, was not consistent throughout; much of the detail of its detour thus requires a closer scrutiny. The phenomenal rise of the language defies explanation in the first instance. The Mughals were Chaghtā'i Turks and we know that, unlike them, the other Turkic rulers outside of Iran, such as the Ottomans in Turkey and the Uzbeks in Central Asia, were not so enthusiastic about Persian. Indeed, in India also, Persian did not appear to hold such dominance at the courts of the early Mughals. In his memoir, Bābur (d. 1530), the founder of the Mughal empire in India, recounted the story of his exploits in Turkish. The Prince was a noted poet and writer of Turkish of his time, second only to ‘Alī Sheēr Nawā’ī (d. 1526). Turkish was the first language of his son and successor, Humāyūn (d. 1556), as well.

Islamization in Classical Arabic Central Asia

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher I. Beckwith
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Byzantine Empire ◽  
Islamic Culture ◽  
Persian Empire ◽  
Intimate Contact ◽  
Cultural Elements ◽  
Central Asian ◽  
Short Time ◽  
Classical Arabic

This chapter examines Islamization in Classical Arabic Central Asia. The Arab Empire founded by the prophet Muhammad expanded rapidly, defeating the Byzantine Empire and capturing Syria (637) and Egypt (640). At the same time, the Arabs defeated the Sasanid Persian Empire (637) and raced across Persia into Central Asia. Within a very short time, early Arab Islamic culture came into direct, intimate contact with several major civilized areas, including the Graeco-Roman-influenced cultures of the Levant and North Africa, Persian culture, and the Buddhist cultures of Central Asia. From them the Muslims adopted various cultural elements. This chapter considers when, where, and how the Muslims acquired the recursive argument method and the Islamic college or madrasa. It shows that the recursive argument method is used in Arabic works by the Central Asian scientist and philosopher Avicenna.

Al-Bīrūnī on Hermetic Forgery

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 54-66
Author(s):  
Kevin van Bladel
Keyword(s):  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
Central Asia ◽  
History Of Science ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Reception History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Hermes Trismegistus

AbstractIn Central Asia in the early eleventh century, the Chorasmian scholar Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī recognized that the Arabic works attributed to Hermes Trismegistus were inventions of recent centuries falsely written in the name of the ancient sage of legend. He did, however, accept the existence of a historical Hermes and even attempted to establish his chronology. This article presents al-Bīrūnī’s statements about this and contextualizes his view of the Arabic Hermetica as he derived it from Arabic chronographic sources. Al-Bīrūnī’s argument is compared with the celebrated seventeenth-century European criticism of the Greek Hermetica by Isaac Casaubon. It documents a hitherto unknown but significant event in the reception history of the Hermetica and helps to illustrate al-Bīrūnī’s attitude toward the history of science.

A Review of Shahriar's Persian Divan Words

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (6) ◽  
pp. 1111
Author(s):  
Mojtaba Shoaei
Keyword(s):  
Distinctive Feature ◽  
Literary Form ◽  
Literary Style ◽  
Figures Of Speech ◽  
Persian Language ◽  
History Of ◽  
Selection Of

The main objective of this study is to review the vocabulary reservoir of Shahriar's Divan linguistically. He has spent a lot of time on creating literary style. His works still maintain its artistic effects. His literary speech still interests every reader to be curious about the history of the evolution of literary form of Persian language. As this is the first study that has been done in the field of the vocabulary reservoir of Shahriar's Persian Divan, Persian Philology categories have been fully presented, the verbal and semantic characteristics of Persian vocabulary reservoir are reflected. Throughout the divan, synonyms have a distinctive feature. Other categories of words such as antonyms, kinds of figures of speech, allusions, simile, metaphor, bilingualism are of important subjects. Selection of the appropriate rhymes is evident in Divan. Shahriar's Divan has also been reviewed linguistically by studying its meaningful examples of poetry. In this study, the volumes published in 2006 have been used. Selecting proper rhymes is evident in Divan. Using antonyms creates various positions and occasions in stylistics.

scholarly journals Man's “Hollow Core”: ethics and aesthetics in Ḥadīth literature and classical Arabic adab

2007 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 459-486
Author(s):  
Stefan Sperl
Keyword(s):  
Literary Form ◽  
Ethical Dimension ◽  
Hollow Core ◽  
Practical Ethics ◽  
Belles Lettres ◽  
Classical Arabic ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractClassical Arabic Ḥadīth literature is largely composed of micro-narratives recording the sayings and deeds of the Prophet Muḥammad. This study seeks to examine their literary form by focusing on selected examples listed in the canonical Ḥadīth compendia under the heading of adab, a term which may be rendered here as “practical ethics” but which is also commonly used to designate classical Arabic belles-lettres. While the latter is a type of literature quite distinct from the literature of Ḥadīth the texts here studied point to a certain interface between them. The ethical dimension of adab as it appears in Ḥadīth is examined further in the light of Haydon White's theory on the relation between narrativity and law. Contrasting the micro-narrative of Ḥadīth with the “macro-narrative” of the epic provides further insight into its approach to adab and serves to highlight its distinct literary and religious aesthetic.

scholarly journals An Examination of Berman’s Negative Deformation Tendencies on Persian Translation of Tess of the d’Urbervilles Novel

2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (5) ◽  
pp. 135
Author(s):  
Fahimeh Vamenani ◽  
Moslem Sadeghi
Keyword(s):  
Document Analysis ◽  
Target Language ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Rater Agreement ◽  
Source Text ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Tess Of The D'urbervilles ◽  
Persian Language ◽  
Research Findings ◽  
Persian Translation

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the frequency of deforming tendencies on Persian translation of Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles based on Berman’s model. Moreover, the study set out to find out how words have been changed from the source language to fit the target language by adopting deforming tendencies. To achieve the aims of study, the researchers relied on content or document analysis as a qualitative type of study to analyze the strategies which were used in the translation of Tess of the d’Urbervilles novel from English to Persian. The data came from a sample of 300 sentences which were randomly selected from the novel translated into the Persian language by Mina Sarabi.The trustworthiness of the research findings was met through inter-rater agreement and it was reported 0.94. The results indicated that Persian translation of the work suffered from lexical mismatches, destruction of rhythm and destruction of vernacular networks, although destruction of rhythms and destruction of vernacular networks were among the most frequently used deformation tendencies. The findings also revealed that the translation has in one way or another maintained the genre and social stance of the author. Overall, it appears that Berman offers a model which is too severe on keeping the form and syntax of the source text in the Persian translation of Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles.

Judaeo-Arabic and Judaeo-Persian

2009 ◽  
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Khan
Keyword(s):  
Central Asia ◽  
Geographical Area ◽  
Arabic Language ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Caucasus ◽  
Linguistic Form ◽  
Written Form ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
Classical Arabic

The term ‘Judaeo-Arabic’ refers to a type of Arabic that was used by Jews and was distinct in some way from other types of Arabic. The Arabic language was used by Jews in Arabia before the rise of Islam. From the point of view of linguistic form, the following characteristic features of written Judaeo-Arabic can be identified: it is written in Hebrew script; it exhibits deviations from Classical Arabic; and it contains Hebrew and Aramaic elements. ‘Judaeo-Persian’ refers to Persian used by Jews. Like Judaeo-Arabic, Judaeo-Persian is not a uniform linguistic entity. The term is used to refer to both a written and a spoken form of language. The geographical area in which it was used extended beyond the boundaries of Iran and included Afghanistan, part of the Caucasus, and much of Central Asia. Judaeo-Persian in its written form is represented in Hebrew script.

The Ghaznavid Empire of India

2021 ◽  
pp. 001946462110411
Author(s):  
Ali Anooshahr
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Arabic Text ◽  
Single Source ◽  
Indian History ◽  
Open Trade ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Persian Translation

Almost all of our information on the Ghaznavids comes from two contemporary chronicles (one in Persian and one in Arabic) and a divan (poetic anthology) from the early eleventh century. The Arabic text is the Tarikh-i Yamini written by Abu Nasr al-ʻUtbi, and the Persian chronicle is the Zayn al-Akhbar by Gardizi. Virtually, all subsequent Persian chroniclers drew on the later Persian translation of the Yamini. After the Mughal period, a few used Gardizi as well. In the nineteenth century, H. M. Elliot translated parts of the Persian translation of ʻUtbi into English, which popularised that particular version of events in modern scholarship. This uncritical overreliance on a single source has led to perhaps the greatest misunderstanding of medieval Indian history. I will argue that the version of the Ghaznavid campaigns in ʻUtbi was meant strictly for the court of the ‘Abbasid caliph in Baghdad where a sufficiently learned audience could actually be expected to understand the very difficult Arabic of the text. The Yamini did not simply embellish reality but was actually trying to create a narrative that was in contradiction to and even independent of reality. It was part of a campaign of misinformation to hide the fact that the Ghaznavids were creating an Indian empire both as a network of tributary kings and as an open trade zone ruled by a king of kings symbolised by the elephant.

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