An Arabist is someone, often but not always from outside the Arab world, who specialises in the study of the Arabic language and culture (usually including Arabic literature).
An Arabist is someone, often but not always from outside the Arab world, who specialises in the study of the Arabic language and culture (usually including Arabic literature).
Arabists began in medieval Muslim Spain, which lay on the frontier between the Muslim world and Christendom. At various times, either a Christian or a Muslim kingdom might be the most hospitable toward scholars. Translation of Arabic texts into Latin (mostly of works on mathematics and astronomy) began as early as the 10th century, major works dates from the School of Toledo, which began during the reign of Alfonso VII of Castile, (1105–1157).
Translations were made into medieval Latin or Church Latin, then Europe's lingua franca , or into medieval Spanish, which was the vernacular language of that time and place. Early translations included works by Avicenna, Al-Ghazali, Avicebron, etc.; books on astronomy, astrology, and medicine; and the works of some of the Ancient Greek philosophers, especially Aristotle, who unlike Plato had previously been relatively unknown and largely ignored in European Christendom. The philosophical translations were accompanied by the Islamic commentaries, e.g., on Al-Ghazali, Ibn Sina (Avicenna), and Ibn Rushd (Averroës), to the point of there being an identifiable Averroist school of philosophy in Christian Europe.[ citation needed ]
This cultural borrowing from the Arab culture enjoyed the strong patronage of Alfonso X of Castile (1221–1284), who commissioned translations of major works into the Latin and the Castilian Spanish of the time. This led to the first Spanish translation of the Qur'an, and of such influential works as Kalilah and Dimnah , Libro de los Engannos e Asayamientos de las Mugeres (Book of the Deceits and Lies of Women), the Escala de Mahomá (The Ascension of Mohammed) and Los juegos del ajedrez[ citation needed ] (The Games of Chess).
The works of Alfonso X in history and astronomy drew on numerous elements of Muslim knowledge. Also, the Tales of Count Lucanor , by Juan Manuel and El Libro de buen amor (The Book of Good Love) by Arcipreste de Hita from this period both show an interpenetration and symbiosis of Oriental and Spanish cultures.
With the Reconquista well under way, Arabist efforts in Spain were sometimes closely tied to the goal of the possibility of proselytizing Christianity in the Arab world.
Spain was so dynamic a center of medieval Arabism as to draw scholars from throughout Christian Europe, notably Gerard of Cremona, Herman of Carinthia, Michael Scotus, and Robert of Ketton. In 1143, Robert of Ketton made the first Latin translation of the Qur'an, at the request of Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny. Mark of Toledo produced another translation of the Qur'an in the 13th century under a mandate from archbishop Rodrigo Ximénez de Rada, who later edited the landmark Historia Arabum ("history of the Arabs"), drawing on the work of al-Razi for the knowledge of al-Andalus prior to the Almoravid conquest.
This trend continued in the 15th century, with Juan de Segovia's trilingual Qur'an (Arabic, Spanish, and Latin), now lost, and Cardinal Cisneros's multilingual Bible. In the 16th century, Pedro de Alcalá produced his Arabic primers for Spanish speakers, and several histories were written about the previous century's reconquest of the Emirate of Granada with its aftermath of Moorish uprisings. [1]
As Arabism was declining in Europe after the Reformation, this was also the case in Spain for like reasons, and due in particular to Mediterranean politics and to the repressive atmosphere created by the Spanish Inquisition. Some Moriscos hesitated to show their knowledge of their mother tongue. [2] In the mid-18th century a new phase of Arabism arose in Spain. Later, in the era of the Generación del 98 Spanish Arabism began to produce widely recognized studies, and thus regained its prominence, particularly regarding such Arabists as Miguel Asín Palacios (1871–1944), and Emilio García Gómez (1905–1995), as well as many others. [3]
In England, Robert of Chester translated many books from Arabic into Latin during the 12th Century, including works from scholars such as Abu Musa Jabir Ibn Hayyan and Al-Khwarizmi. The Adams Professorship in the Arabic language was established at Cambridge University in England in July 1632. The Laudian Professorship in Arabic was established at Oxford University in 1636.
Italy, France, Germany, and the Netherlands have enjoyed a long and fruitful involvement in the study of the Arabic language and Arab cultures, as well of Islam, with scholars like Levinus Warner and Joseph Scaliger. Many other European countries have also produced scholars who have made notable contributions to the study of the Arabs and Arabic cultures, including Sweden, Czech Republic, Poland, Scotland, Romania, Hungary, Belgium, and Russia. [ citation needed ]
Richard Francis Burton entered Trinity College, Oxford in autumn 1840, after his family had travelled extensively in Europe (he spoke English, French and Italian). His studies at Oxford included falconry and Arabic.
Burton's time in the Pakistani province of Sindh prepared him well for the transgressive pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina that he undertook in 1853 (he was not a Muslim and non-Muslims are forbidden to enter these holy cities). Seven years in Pakistan had given Burton a familiarity with the customs and behaviour of Muslims. This journey made Burton famous. He had planned it whilst travelling disguised among the Muslims of Sindh, and had laboriously prepared for the ordeal by study and practice (including having himself circumcised to further lower the risk of being discovered).
Although Burton was not the first non-Muslim European to make the Hajj (that distinction belonging to Ludovico di Barthema in 1503), his pilgrimage is the most famous and the best documented of the time. He adopted various disguises, including that of a Pathan, to account for any oddities in speech, but he still had to master intricate Islamic ritual, and the minutiae of Eastern manners and etiquette. Burton's trek to Mecca was quite dangerous and his caravan was attacked by bandits (a common experience at the time). As he put it, although "...neither Koran or Sultan enjoin the death of Jew or Christian intruding within the columns that note the sanctuary limits, nothing could save a European detected by the populace, or one who after pilgrimage declared himself an unbeliever." The pilgrimage entitled him to the title of Hajji and to wear a green turban. Burton's own account of his journey is given in Personal Narrative of a Pilgrimage to Al Madinah and Meccah (1855).
T.E. Lawrence started out as an archaeologist in what is now Syria and Lebanon where he studied Arabic and immersed himself in Arab culture. After joining the British Army with the outbreak of World War I, he became known for his role in the Arab Revolt against Ottoman rule gaining fame as Lawrence of Arabia. He worked closely with the Hashemite dynasty that established independent Arab states in Hejaz, Iraq, Syria, and Jordan after ending Ottoman rule.
Lawrence's heroic reputation was built from his own lively writing skills, sensational reporting by American journalist Lowell Thomas, and later the dramatization of his life in the epic film Lawrence of Arabia.
Lady Hester Stanhope, after the death of British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger, to whom she acted as hostess, took up a life of travel. She spent most of her life in the Middle East and was accepted as Queen of the Bedouin.
Gertrude Bell, was an English writer, traveller, political officer, administrator, archaeologist and spy. She played a major role in establishing and helping administer the modern state of Iraq.
St John Philby was a British colonial office intelligence officer and King Ibn Sa'ud of Saudi Arabia's chief adviser in dealing with the British Empire and Western oil powers.
Hans Wehr (1909–1981) was a German Arabist, professor at the University of Münster from 1957–1974. Wehr published the Arabisches Wörterbuch (1952), which was later published in an English edition as A Dictionary of Modern Written Arabic, edited by J. Milton Cowan. As part of this dictionary, Wehr created a transliteration scheme to represent the Arabic alphabet.
Some notable Arabists from the Middle East worth mentioning are Haim Zafrani in Morocco, Ahmad Zaki Pasha in Egypt, Tarif Khalidi in Lebanon, Zvi Elpeleg in Israel, Mehmet Hakkı Suçin in Turkey and William Duff. [4]
The term Moor is an exonym first used by Christian Europeans to designate the Muslim populations of the Maghreb, al-Andalus, Sicily and Malta during the Middle Ages. Moors are not a single, distinct or self-defined people. The 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica observed that the term had "no real ethnological value." Europeans of the Middle Ages and the early modern period variously applied the name to Arabs, Berbers, and Muslim Europeans.
Moriscos were former Muslims and their descendants whom the Roman Catholic Church and the Spanish Crown commanded to convert to Christianity or face compulsory exile after Spain outlawed the open practice of Islam by its sizeable Muslim population in the early 16th century.
Al-Andalus was the Muslim-ruled area of the Iberian Peninsula. The term is used by modern historians for the former Islamic states in modern-day Gibraltar, Portugal, Spain, and Southern France. The name describes the different Muslim states that controlled these territories at various times between 711 and 1492. At its greatest geographical extent, it occupied most of the peninsula and part of present-day southern France (Septimania) under Umayyad rule. These boundaries changed constantly through a series of conquests Western historiography has traditionally characterized as the Reconquista, eventually shrinking to the south and finally to the Emirate of Granada.
The golden age of Jewish culture in Spain, which coincided with the Middle Ages in Europe, was a period of Muslim rule during which, Jews were generally accepted in society and Jewish religious, cultural, and economic life flourished.
Lex Mahumet pseudoprophete is the translation of the Qur'an into Medieval Latin by Robert of Ketton. It is the earliest translation of the Qur'an into a Western European language.
Apology of al-Kindi is a medieval theological polemic making a case for Christianity and drawing attention to alleged flaws in Islam. The word "apology" is a translation of the Arabic word رسالة, and it is used in the sense of apologetics.
Muhammad Ma Jian was a Hui-Chinese Islamic scholar and translator, known for translating the Qur'an into Chinese and stressing compatibility between Marxism and Islam.
Latin translations of the 12th century were spurred by a major search by European scholars for new learning unavailable in western Europe at the time; their search led them to areas of southern Europe, particularly in central Spain and Sicily, which recently had come under Christian rule following their reconquest in the late 11th century. These areas had been under Muslim rule for a considerable time, and still had substantial Arabic-speaking populations to support their search. The combination of this accumulated knowledge and the substantial numbers of Arabic-speaking scholars there made these areas intellectually attractive, as well as culturally and politically accessible to Latin scholars. A typical story is that of Gerard of Cremona, who is said to have made his way to Toledo, well after its reconquest by Christians in 1085, because he:
arrived at a knowledge of each part of [philosophy] according to the study of the Latins, nevertheless, because of his love for the Almagest, which he did not find at all amongst the Latins, he made his way to Toledo, where seeing an abundance of books in Arabic on every subject, and pitying the poverty he had experienced among the Latins concerning these subjects, out of his desire to translate he thoroughly learnt the Arabic language.
The Toledo School of Translators is the group of scholars who worked together in the city of Toledo during the 12th and 13th centuries, to translate many of the Islamic philosophy and scientific works from Classical Arabic into Medieval Latin.
Miguel Asín Palacios was a Spanish scholar of Islamic studies and the Arabic language, and a Roman Catholic priest. He is primarily known for suggesting Muslim sources for ideas and motifs present in Dante's Divine Comedy, which he discusses in his book La Escatología musulmana en la Divina Comedia (1919). He wrote on medieval Islam, extensively on al-Ghazali. A major book El Islam cristianizado (1931) presents a study of Sufism through the works of Muhyiddin ibn 'Arabi of Murcia in Andalusia. Asín also published other comparative articles regarding certain Islamic influences on Christianity and on mysticism in Spain.
During the Spanish Golden Age a great number of translations were made, specially from Arabic, Latin and Greek classics, into Spanish, and in turn, from Spanish into other languages.
Emilio García Gómez, 1st Count of Alixares was a Spanish Arabist, literary historian and critic, whose talent as a poet enriched his many translations from Arabic.
There was cultural contact between Europe and the Islamic world from the Renaissance to Early Modern period.
During the High Middle Ages, the Islamic world was at its cultural peak, supplying information and ideas to Europe, via Al-Andalus, Sicily and the Crusader kingdoms in the Levant. These included Latin translations of the Greek Classics and of Arabic texts in astronomy, mathematics, science, and medicine. Translation of Arabic philosophical texts into Latin "led to the transformation of almost all philosophical disciplines in the medieval Latin world", with a particularly strong influence of Muslim philosophers being felt in natural philosophy, psychology and metaphysics. Other contributions included technological and scientific innovations via the Silk Road, including Chinese inventions such as paper, compass and gunpowder.
The Lead Books of Sacromonte are a series of texts inscribed on circular lead leaves, now considered to be 16th century forgeries.
Christian influences in Islam can be traced back to Eastern Christianity, which surrounded the origins of Islam. Islam, emerging in the context of the Middle East that was largely Christian, was first seen as a Christological heresy known as the "heresy of the Ishmaelites", described as such in Concerning Heresy by Saint John of Damascus, a Syriac scholar.
The Young Man of Arévalo was a Morisco crypto-Muslim author from Arévalo, Castile who was the most productive known Islamic author in Spain during the period after the forced conversion of Muslims there. He traveled widely across Spain to visit crypto-Muslim communities and wrote several works about Islam which includes accounts from his travels. His real identity and dates of birth and death are unknown, but most of his travels took place in the first half of the sixteenth century.
The literature of al-Andalus, also known as Andalusi literature, was produced in al-Andalus, or Islamic Iberia, from the Muslim conquest in 711 to either the Catholic conquest of Granada in 1492 or the expulsion of the Moors ending in 1614. Andalusi literature was written primarily in Arabic, but also in Hebrew, Latin, and Romance.
The Kitāb al-wāḍiḥ bi-l-ḥaqq, known in Latin as the Liber denudationis, is a Copto-Arabic apologetic treatise against Islam. It was written by a Muslim convert to Christianity, Būluṣ ibn Rajāʾ, around 1010 in Fāṭimid Egypt. Its purpose is to provide a refutation of Islam on the basis of the Qurʾān and the ḥadīth (tradition). It was translated into Latin in the 13th century, probably in Toledo. It had much greater influence in translation than in its original language.
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