Ottoman Translation: Circulating Texts from Bombay to Paris (Edinburgh Studies on the Ottoman Empire)

#### Studies translation into and amongst the Ottoman Empire’s many languages * Offers eight collaboratively written, in-depth case studies of translation between Ottoman and associated languages, from scholars with diverse linguistic expertise * Focuses on texts translated or adapted from Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, English, French, and Greek into Arabic, Urdu, Hindi, Bengali, Ottoman Turkish, Greek, Karamanlidika, Persian, Bosnian and French * Displaces the epicentre of Translation Studies and Comparative Literature eastward, challenging views of translation and text dissemination that centre ‘the West’ * Includes case studies of Bunyan’s __Pilgrim’s Progress__, Shakespeare’s __Othello__, Eugène Sue’s __Mystères de Paris__, Khayr al-Din Pasha’s __Muqaddima__, Abdulhak Hamit's __Tarik__, Qasim Amin’s __Tahrir al-Mar’a__, Muhammad Farid Wajdi’s __The Muslim Woman__ and Fatima Aliye’s __Nisvan-ı İslam__ A vigorous translation scene across the nineteenth-century Ottoman Empire—government and private, official and amateur, acknowledged and anonymous—saw many texts from European languages rewritten into the multiple tongues that Ottoman subjects spoke, read and wrote. Just as lively, however, was translation amongst Ottoman languages, and between those and the languages of their neighbours to the east. This proliferation and circulation of texts in translation and adaptation, through a range of strategies, leads us to ask: What is an ‘Ottoman language’? This volume challenges earlier scholarship that has highlighted translation and adaptation from European languages to the neglect of alternative translations, re-centring translation as an Ottoman ‘hub’. Collaborative work has allowed us to peer over the shoulders of working translators to ask how they creatively transported texts between as well as beyond Ottoman languages, with a range of studies stretching linguistically and geographically from Bengal to London, Istanbul to Paris, Andalusia to Bosnia. Contents 5 Note on Translation, Transliteration and Form 7 Acknowledgements 8 Notes on Contributors 10 Introduction: Ottoman Central: Circulating Translations from the Indian Ocean to the Eastern Mediterranean and on to the Far West of Europe 15 PART I PROLIFERATING CLASSICS 43 Chapter 1 A Pilgrim Progressively Translated: John Bunyan in Arabic, Urdu, Hindi and Bengali 43 Chapter 2 ‘Pour Our Treasures into Foreign Laps’: The Translation of Othello into Arabic and Ottoman Turkish 83 Chapter 3 Shared Secrets: (Re)writing Urban Mysteries in Nineteenth-century Istanbul 113 PART II MEDITERRANEAN MULTIPLES 135 Chapter 4 Khayr al-Din al-Tunisi’s Muqaddima to Aqwam al-masalik fi ma‘rifat ahwal al-mamalik (The Surest Path to Knowing the Condition of Kingdoms), in Arabic, French and Ottoman Turkish 135 Chapter 5 Finding the Lost Andalusia: Reading Abdülhak Hamid Tarhan’s Tarık or the Conquest of al-Andalus in its Multiple Renderings 204 PART III WOMEN IN TRANSLATION 241 Chapter 6 Translating Qasim Amin’s Arabic Tahrir al-marʼa (1899) into Ottoman Turkish 241 Chapter 7 Muslim Woman: The Translation of a Patriarchal Order in Flux 300 Chapter 8 Fatma Aliye’s Nisvan-ı İslam: Istanbul, Beirut, Cairo, Paris, 1891–6 341 Index 403 SA vigorous translation scene across the 19th-century Ottoman Empire government and private, official and amateur, acknowledged and anonymous saw many texts from European languages rewritten into the multiple tongues that Ottoman subjects spoke, read and wrote. Just as lively, however, was translation among Ottoman languages, and between those and the languages of neighbours to the east. The proliferation and circulation of texts in translation and adaptation leads us to ask: What is an 'Ottoman language'? This volume challenges earlier scholarship that has highlighted translation and adaptation from European languages to the neglect of alternative translations, re-centring translation as an Ottoman 'hub'. Through 8 collaboratively written case studies, stretching linguistically and geographically from Bengal to London, Istanbul to Paris, Andalusia to Bosnia, it peers over the shoulders of working translators to ask how they creatively transported texts between as well as beyond Ottoman languages. In doing so, it also ponders broader issues of cultural transfer and culture production in the Ottoman Empire, its European and Arabophone territories and south Asia in a period of emerging nationalist ferment