Inner-Islamic Transfer of Knowledge within Arabic-Persian-Ottoman Translation Processes in the Eastern Mediterranean (1400–1750)

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Philip Bockholt
• Subject Area: Islamic Studies, Arabian Studies, Semitic Studies
• Term: since 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 490721181

Translations played a crucial role in the making of the Ottoman Empire during the early modern period. As a transregional transfer of knowledge, translation processes were intertwined with the increasing religious and political polarisation between the Sunni Ottomans and the Shiite Safavids in the Eastern Mediterranean and Middle East. Using an interdisciplinary approach, the junior research group will analyse translation as a concept, product, and process in a central region of the Islamicate world for the first time. By examining works that were widely read, translated and commented upon between 1400 and 1750, the project aims at contextualising translations from Arabic and Persian into Ottoman-Turkish with coeval trends of intellectual history. In merging approaches developed in the fields of Middle Eastern studies, translation studies, and material philology, the group can fill the gaps of previous research and replace reductive conceptualisations of translation with a novel understanding grounded in the sociocultural history of the region and period. This applies especially to translators, patrons and readership negotiating imperial identity, demarcating confessional boundaries, and adapting literary norms.Four research projects will examine translations pertaining to historiographical, biographical, encyclopaedic, and exegetic genres. Focusing on manuscripts as material objects, the projects will analyse the transmission and readership of the texts. Taking into account the content as well as paratextual elements such as ownership statements, seals, layout and illuminations, the junior research group will investigate translations as nexus between texts, translators (as authoritative actors) and literary practices. With this comprehensive approach, the group will shed light on networks of early modern knowledge production in the Eastern Mediterranean. By scrutinising prefaces, postscripts, ownership statements, and visual characteristics, it will trace individual mechanisms of knowledge transfer within broader confessional, political, and literary trends. Contextualising translation processes and relating them to tendencies in early modern intellectual history constitutes a genuine contribution to the field of intellectual history of the Islamicate world. To grant future research access to the collected data, the project will migrate it into the Bibliotheca Arabica project (Saxon Academy of Sciences, Leipzig) through a bio-bibliographical research platform.

• DFG Programme: Independent Junior Research Groups