This panel explores the translation practices in the early modern Ottoman and Safavid empires and analyzes the constellation of motivations behind the translations as well as their inner workings. Towards this end, the papers that make up this panel addresses a number of questions with regard to the nature, scope, context, and audience of the translations. Ambitious translation projects in the two empires represented collective and sustained efforts, rather than ephemeral and individual phenomena. They were more than simple linguistic tools or literary exercises. The papers in the panel locate the translations within the religious, political, and social context of each empire, as well as within the ideological and religio-political rivalry and exchanges between the two empires.
The first paper examines the eighteenth-century Turkish translation of one of the most prominent Persian chronicle of the Safavid Empire, Tarih-i 'Alamara-yi 'Abbasi by Iskandar Beg Munshi (d. 1634). Mehmed Nebih, who was a prominent member of Sultan Ahmed III's (r.1703-1730) translation committee, completed its Turkish translation during the period of ongoing Ottoman interest in Persian works during the decline of the Safavid empire. This paper explains how this chronicle written by a Shi'i author was translated and introduced to a Sunni audience. The second paper dovetails with the first in its interest and primary questions, as it examines the Turkish translation of another famous Safavid chronicle, Habib al-siyar by Ghiyas al-Din Khwandamir (d. 1535-6). Like the former chronicle, Habib al-siyar was rendered into Turkish by the members of Sultan Ahmed III's translation committee on the commission of Grand Vizier Ibrahim Pasha in the eighteenth century. The next paper focuses on Nev'i-zade 'Atayi (d.1635), a well-known Ottoman scholar, and his work, Hamsa (a set of five romances in masnaw? form), showing that 'Atayi was in search of originality and was critical of the imitation of Persian literary works. As a writer, he functioned in the context of an intellectual and cultural milieu in which translations from Persian were in full swing and migrant Safavid literary scholars enjoyed the patronage of the Ottoman court. The last paper highlights the importance of non-Shi'ite works that were translated into Persian as a part of the Safavid translation movement, during which almost all major Shi'ite works written in Arabic before the Safavids, as well as works from a diverse range of fields in other languages, were rendered into Persian.
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The Ottoman Turkish Translation of History of Shah Abbas the Great (Tarih-i Alamara-yi ‘Abbasi)
Tarih-i Alamara-yi ‘Abbasi, renowned Safavid chronicle, written in Persian by Iskandar Bag Munshi, and dedicated to Shah Abbas I (r. 1588-1629) was translated into Ottoman Turkish in the early eighteenth century. The translator Mehmed Nebih was a member of the translation committee officially created by Grand Vizier Damad Ibrahim Pasha during the reign of Sultan Ahmed III (r.1703-1730). In 1720, Damad Ibrahim Pasha launched this state-sponsored translation project which marks an important period of cultural activity in Ottoman history, later labelled as the "Tulip Age" by the twentieth-century Ottoman historiography. The formation of the translation committee and the texts chosen to be translated is significant. Tarih-i Alamara-yi ‘Abbasi, a remarkable Safavid chronicle, was a highly read text in the Ottoman lands in Persian, yet the attempt to translate it as a part of the committee, shows renewed interest of Ottomans in Iran. The time period is more than coincidence; Ottomans were highly engaged with the decline of Safavids and the Afghan invasion of Isfahan in 1722 along with Russians.
Being a Sunni Muslim, in his own preface to the translation, he makes clear that he will convert phrases against the Sunni tradition which were in the original Shii text. I will try to locate what the translator took out or kept in his translation in order to understand what he found problematic or not to his target Sunni audience, by considering recent translation studies as opposed to the linguistic approach. Recent studies elaborate on the translations within the context of the receiving culture which emancipated the translations from being restricted to the linguistic framework. This new approach enabled historians to analyze the translations from various languages into Ottoman Turkish in their historical context. Accordingly, I will decipher the layers of Ottoman Turkish translation of Tarih-i Alamara-yi ‘Abbasi within the new religio-political context of Islamic world.
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Prof. Philip Bockholt
From the 16th to 18th centuries, a striking number of Ottoman Turkish translations of Arabic and Persian historiographical narratives was made available to an Ottoman audience in Istanbul, at that time capital of the Ottoman Empire. Apart from scattered information found in library catalogues and scarce remarks on a few texts being discussed in articles, we do not know much about why these chronicles were singled out for translation, which people were involved as patrons and translators, when and where exactly the process of translating took place and, last but not least, how people actually translated texts from one language into another. Among the many texts translated into Ottoman Turkish were chronicles like the Persian general and dynastic histories Rawzat al-safa and Tarikh-i Alamara-yi 'Abbasi, both dating back to Timurid and Safavid times, and the Arabic chronicle 'Iqd al-juman written in Mamluk Egypt. All of these were translated at a time when the Ottomans were, with regard to Safavid Iran, heavily engaged with their neighbours in war, or had already overcome former rivals, as in the case of the Mamluks in Egypt and Syria. Thus, among others, as a case in point, the various translations of Persian histories made on the order of the Grand Vezir Damat Ibrahim Pasha in the 18th c. might be seen as an attempt by the Ottomans to learn more about their subjects and current enemies.
In my paper, I will focus on several translations of Ghiyas al-Din Muhammad Khvandamir’s Habib al-siyar (Beloved of careers), a Persian general history written under Shah Isma'il I in Safavid Herat in the 1520s. Being copied all over the Persianate world from Anatolia in the west to the Indian subcontinent in the east in premodern times, today, there are several dozen extant Persian copies and a number of Ottoman Turkish translations of the work being kept in libraries in Istanbul alone. Of these, at least one translation was made on demand of the Grand Vezir Damat Ibrahim Pasha. By having a look at paratextual elements as well as the text itself, I will contextualize these manuscripts and put them into a broader framework of the transmission of knowledge between the Ottoman Empire and its neighbours.
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Ercan Akyol
Roots of the early modern Ottoman court culture can be traced back to the ancient Persian adab tradition. Accordingly, Ottoman court literature flourished under the influence of Persian literature by way of content, form, vocabulary and wording. As a result of this, many Turkish literary works, most notably masnawis, were modelled on Persian literary works via translations, imitations and adaptations. Especially, the generous support and the patronage of Ottoman dignitaries played a critical role in the 15th and 16th centuries. Most of the Ottoman poets tried to show their literary skills by means of these translations; although some "original" literary works were written in that span of time. However, when it comes to the 17th century of the Ottoman court literature, what differs from the preceding eras is the increasing number of original masnawis. As a functionary of the empire and a prolific litterateur, who functioned in the context of an intellectual and cultural milieu in which translations from Persian were still in full swing and migrant Safavid literary scholars sought refuge in the patronage of the Ottoman court, Nevizade Atayi (d. 1636) authored a hamsa (a set of five romances in masnawi form) to be dedicated to the high-ranking Ottoman court members. This paper demonstrates that although his inspiration was taken from Nizami Ganjavi (d.1209) and Molla Cami (d.1492), who wrote some paradigmatic Persian works of the genre and were also very influential in Safavid literary milieu of the time, the Nevizade Atayi’s Hamsa had an expressed agenda to transcend the imitation of Persian literary works and to create original contents for masnawi genre. Moreover, it examines the authorship and dedication of Nevizade Atayi’s work by situating his work in it is literary, cultural, and political context, which was marked by the Ottoman-Safavid rivalry and exchanges.
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The Safavid era (1501 -1736) saw the flowering of Shi'i literary culture and intellectual life supported by an ambitious translation movement. This movement resulted in Persian translation of almost all major Shi'i works written in Arabic before the Safavids as well as works from a diverse range of fields in other languages. This effort represented a collective and sustained societal effort, from Shahs to scholars, rather than an individual and ephemeral phenomenon. In this regard, as Iranian scholar Muhammad Riza Husayni has suggested in his short essay published in 2014, this translation movement can be considered analogous to the translation movement of the Abbasid era. Although some research, such as Rula J. Abisaab’s book, Converting Persia (2004) and the short essays of Muhsin Nasirabadi (2001) and Muhammad Riza Husayni (2014), has been published on Persian translations of Shi'ite works, the translations of non-Shi'ite religious, technical, and philosophical works have mostly remained unexplored. This paper will highlight the importance of non-Shi‘ite works among the host of significant works translated into Persian as a part of the Safavid translation movement. These include, Ihya’ ‘ulum al-din by Abu Hamid al-Ghazali, al-Shifa by Ibn Sina (Avicenna), Tarikh al-Hukama by Ibn al-Qifti, from Arabic, and Badayi‘ al-handasa, a work on geometry from Latin. In addition to these works, the four gospels of the New Testament and linguistic works to instruct Persian for Turkish-speaking peoples were also translated into Persian in Safavid Iran. This paper uses the theoretical framework of translation studies the translators’ own accounts of their work, as well as numerous Persian catalogues, chronicles, and bibliographical works. Moreover, it seeks to discern the inner workings and motivations behind the translations of these sort of works and suggests that pragmatic considerations and religious motivations played important roles in the translation movement.
