ENCYCLOPEDIA MEDIEVAL ISLAMIC PART 33

TRANSLATION, ARABIC INTO PERSIAN

  From the early Islamic centuries onward, translations have played an important role in the interaction between the Arabic and Persian languages and literatures.

Translations of the Samanid Period

  The first known translations of Arabic writings into (New) Persian were produced in Eastern Iran and Transoxiana under the patronage of the Samanids (AH 204–395 CE/819–1005), who promoted extensive literary activity in both languages. Among the earliest recorded examples, Abu’l-Fadl Bal’ami (d. 329/940), vizier of Nasr II b. Ahmad (r. 301–331/914–933), translated Ibn al-Muqaffa’’s Arabic version of the Kalila wa-Dimna, a collection of animal fables, into Persian prose, and the poet Rudaki (d. 329/941–942) rendered it into Persian verse. Some two centuries earlier, ibn al-Muqaffa’ (d. ca. 139/757) had himself translated the work from Middle Persian into Arabic, and his rendering served as the basis for numerous later versions in prose and verse in both Arabic and Persian.

  The most ambitious translations sponsored by the Samanids, however, belong to the reign of Mansur I b. Nuh (350–365/961–976), who commissioned his vizier Abu ‘Ali Bal’ami (d. 382–387/992–997, the son of Abu’l-Fadl) to translate the universal history of alTabari (d. 310/923) into Persian and also ordered a translation of al-Tabari’s Qur’anic commentary. During a period of increasingly tense relations between the Samanids on the one hand and the ‘Abbasids and the Buyids on the other, Mansur’s initiative was almost certainly intended to strengthen the legitimacy of Samanid rule in the eastern regions. Bal’ami, who added some materials and omitted others, reworked al-Tabari’s History into a continuous narrative that presents Islamic history from an Iranian point of view. The Persian Tafsir (Commentary) likewise omits portions of al-Tabari’s work and introduces several elements that are not found in the Arabic original; it was perhaps intended to undermine the teachings of the many heterodox and sectarian groups, especially the Isma’ilis and Karramis, that flourished in Khurasan and Transoxania at the time and to appeal to non-Muslim communities as well. Both ‘‘translations’’ were probably also designed to foster the acculturation of the Turkish military elite created by the Samanids (Daniel, 1990; Meisami, 1999).

  Although the Samanid period is associated with the earliest translations from Arabic into Persian, such works continued to appear throughout the premodern period across the Iranian-speaking world and indeed beyond it. For the patrons who commissioned them, translations of Arabic works could enhance legitimacy and confer prestige. At the same time, many translations served practical and instructional purposes. The range of subject matter covered by the recorded translations shows that there was a significant demand among Persian speakers for some access to the scholarship and scientific learning expressed in Arabic. Several Persian translators of the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries stated in their prefaces that their purpose was to make their Arabic sources available to the elites and the common people alike (Lazard, 1975; Bosworth 1978–1979).

  Translations of Works on Religious Subjects

  Despite disagreement among religious scholars about the permissibility of translating the Qur’an, many translations into Persian appeared throughout the medieval period. Interlinear translations were especially common. When Mansur b. Nuh commissioned his translation of al-Tabari’s Tafsir, he consulted a group of Transoxianan scholars, who declared it permissible for those did not know Arabic to read and write the Qur’anic commentary in Persian (Tarjuma-yi Tafsir-i Tabari,ed. H.Yaghma’i. Tehran, 1988. I:5). From the fifth/eleventh century onward, many commentators on the Qur’an chose to write in Persian so as to reach a broader audience.

  Although Arabic never lost its status as the preeminent medium for the expression of religious thought and scholarship, Persian rapidly developed as an important secondary language into which works about religious subjects, including jurisprudence, theology, and mysticism, could be translated and in which, eventually, original works were written. The Sawad al-A’zam, a catechism formulated by the Hanafi scholar Abu’l-Qasim al-Samarqandi (d. 342/953), was translated into Arabic at the behest of the Samanid ruler Nuh II b. Mansur (r. 365–387/976–997). Among the most popular Persian translations of Arabic works were those that recorded the sayings and speeches of ‘Ali ra, the first imam, those of the later imams, and commentaries on these materials. Arabic collections of the imams’ utterances and communications included the Hundred Words of ‘Ali ra, compiled inz Arabic by al-Jahiz (d. 255/868–869), and the Covenant of Ashtar, ‘Ali’ ra letter to his governor, al-Ashtar (d. 38/658), itself also contained in the Nahj al-Balagha, the anthology of ‘Ali’s homilies and letters compiled by al-Sharif al-Radi (359–406/970–1016). Numerous Persian translations of these works were produced, including Husayn b. Muhammad Avi’s version of the Covenant of Ashtar (ca. 729/1329) and the versions of the Covenant and of the Risala al-Ahwaziyya of Ja’far al-Sadiq, the sixth imam, recorded in the Adab al-Wulat of the eminent Shi‘i scholar of Safavid times, Muhammad Baqir Majlisi (d. 1111/1699). The establishment of Shi‘ism as the religion of the state in Iran under the Safavids stimulated a particularly large number of translations from Arabic, especially of Shi‘i works.

  By the fifth/eleventh century, Iranian Muslim writers frequently composed works about religious subjects in both languages. Among such bilingual scholars were the Sunni intellectual Abu Hamid al-Ghazali (450–505/1058–1111), the Shi‘i theologian and scientist Nasir al-Din Tusi (d. 672/1273), and several Sufi thinkers, such as ’Abdallah Ansari (d. 481/1088), Shah Ni’matallah Wali (d. 834/1431), and ‘Abd al-Rahman Jami (d. 898/1492).

Translations of Works on Scientific Subjects

  As in the case of the religious sciences, Arabic remained the primary—but not the exclusive—language for the  expression of scientific thought in Iran. Ibn Sina (ca. 370–428/980–1037) and Biruni (362–ca. 442/973–ca. 1050) wrote their principal works in Arabic, despite the fact that they spent their lives in Persian-speaking regions. Both scholars, however, expressed a portion of their oeuvres in Persian. Ibn Sina wrote two introductory Persian works: a short medical text,Andar Danish-i Rag, and a philosophical anthology, the Danish nama-yi ’Ala’i, both composed for his last patron, the independent ruler at Isfahan, ’Ala’ al-Dawla Muhammad b. Dushmanziyar b. Kakuya (r. 398–433/1008–1041). As a further illustration of the porous nature of the two literatures even in scientific fields, the Danishnamawas effectively rendered into Arabic in the Maqasid al-Falasifa of al-Ghazali. In the case of Biruni’s Kitab al-Tafhim (420/1029), which deals with geometry, arithmetic, astronomy, and astrology, it is unclear whether the Arabic or the Persian version of the work appeared first.

Translations of Ethical and Political Works

  Among the types of writing that were frequently chosen for translation from Arabic into Persian (and into other languages as well) were works dealing with statecraft, books of advice for rulers, and collections of wisdom literature. Selected sayings of Plato appear in several Persian works. The Sirr al-Asrar (Secretum Secretorum) ascribed to Aristotle was translated into Persian. A selection of the Epistlesof the Ikhwan alSafa’ appeared in Persian translation in a work entitled Mujmal al-Hikma. Many Persian translations were made of Aristotle’s letter to Alexander; among these translations was that of Muhammad b. Ahmad Zawzani, which was prepared during the fifth/eleventh century. In southern Iran, during the reign of the Muzaffarid Shah-i Shuja’ (r. 765–786/1364–1384), al-Raghib al-Isfahani’s widely-read treatise the Dhari’a ila Makarim al-Shari’awas rendered into Persian, with added counsels drawn from Islamic, Greek, and Iranian materials. In 901/1495, Yusuf b. Hasan Husayni Shafi’i Rumi (d. 922/1516) translated al-Mawardi’s famous work on government, the Ahkam al-Sultaniyya, into Persian for Rustam Bahadur Aqquyunlu (r. 898–901/1492–1495). In India, the Arabic mirror for princes the Siraj al-Muluk of al-Tartushi (451–520/1059–1126) was translated into Persian for the Mughal commander and potentate ‘Abd al-Rahim Khan Khanan (d. 1036/1627).

Translations of Works of Historiography

  Adaptations of Arabic historiographical works, especially those that concerned Iran, found a ready audience among Persian-speakers. The anonymous author of the Mujmal al-Tavarikh va-l-Qisas, compiled around 520/1126, translated some of his materials from Arabic into Persian. In 603/1206–1207, Jarbadhqani produced a Persian translation of the Arabic history of the Ghaznavids, the Ta’rikh al-Yamini of ’Utbi (350–427 or 31/961–1036 or 1040). A decade later, Ibn Isfandiyar, journeying in Khvarazm, came across a copy of theLetter of Tansar, a Sasanian work reportedly rendered into Arabic from Middle Persian by Ibn al-Muqaffa’; Ibn Isfandiyar translated the Arabic text into Persian and incorporated it into his History of  Tabaristan(ca. 613/1216–1217). Ibn alTiqtaqa (d. ca. 709/1309), author of the two-part Arabic Kitab al-Fakhri (701/1301), revised his book after the execution in 702/1303 of its first dedicatee, Fakhr al-Din ’Isa, governor of Mosul; the second, historiographical half of the revised version was translated with significant modifications into Persian around 714/1314 as theTajarib al-Salafof Hindushah b. Sanjar Nakhjavani and dedicated to the Hazaraspid ruler Nusrat al-Dzin Ahmad b. Yusufshah (r. 696–730 or 733/1296–1330 or 1333). Avi translated not only the Covenant of Ashtar (see above) but also the ArabicMahasin Isfahanas the History of  Isfahanin 729/1329 under the patronage of the vizier Ghiyath al-Din (d. 736/1336), for whom a number of other Arabic works were translated into Persian. A manuscript dated 789/1387 and entitledTajarib al-Umam fi Akhbar Muluk al-’Arab wa-l-’Ajampur ports to be the Persian translation of an Arabic history composed in 75/694–695; it covers the period from Sam b. Nuh a.s  to Yazdagird III, and it is said to have been in the possession of a succession of rulers until such a time that it could no longer be read and the ruler of the age had it translated into Persian.

Bilingualism

  The exchange between the Arabic and Persian literatures took several forms, not all of which involved freestanding translation–adaptations. Many authors of poetry and prose wrote in both languages; some composed independent works in each language, and  some rendered their own Arabic works into Persian

(and, occasionally, vice versa). The literary anthologies of al-Tha’alibi (350–429/961–1038) and his student al-Bakharzi (d. 467/1075) attest to a considerable number of poets and writers in Iran and Transoxiana who wrote equally fluently in Arabic and Persian. Another literary feature of the fourth/tenth and fifth/eleventh centuries are patchwork poems (mulamma’at), which are either Arabic poems that include Persian words or poems in which verses in the two languages alternate. The twelfth-century Khvarazmian poet Rashid al-Din Vatvat (d. 573 or 578/1177 or 1182) composed verses in Arabic and Persian and sometimes employed both languages in a single poem, and the celebrated Persian poets Sa’di (d. 691/1292) and Rumi (604–672/1207–1273) likewise wrote in Arabic as well as Persian.

  Authors of prose works display a similarly high degree of bilingualism. Among many other writers, al-Ghazali wrote some works in Persian as well as many in Arabic. Although he composed his vast compendium, the Ihya’ ’Ulum al-Din, in Arabic, alGhazali wrote a modified abridgment of it, the Kimiya-yi sa’Adat, in Persian, for the benefit of ordinary people who were unschooled in Arabic. In the Akhlaq-i Nasiri, his acclaimed work on ethics and political philosophy, Nasir al-Din Tusi (d. 672/1273) includes a Persian summary of the Tahdhib al-Akhlaq of Miskawayh (d. 421/1030), who had himself brought together Greek, Iranian, Arab, and Islamic traditions in his (Arabic) writings. The Akhlaq-i Nasiri became a model for later writers, including Davvani (d. 908/1502), whose Akhlaq-i Jalali like wise includes a Persian epitome of Miskawayh’s treatise.

  The sizable number of translations that are known to have been prepared undoubtedly constitute only a small portion of those that were actually undertaken. Moreover, very few works are extant in both their original Arabic and their translated versions, so the relationship of one to the other is often difficult to assess. In some instances, especially when the subject matter concerned religion, precision was essential. In other cases, it seems that translators were not necessarily required to provide complete or accurate versions of the original work but were expected to adapt the text, especially by omitting and adding materials, to suit the needs and interests of the new audience; the surviving translations of historiographical works often display a particularly free relationship with their Arabic sources, and, in several cases, they explicitly incorporate later materials to extend the narrative beyond the period covered by the original. However, the process of translation was only one medium for the reception of Arabic materials in Persian; the high frequency of bilingualism among educated Iranian Muslims facilitated various other forms of interaction between the two literatures, including abridgement in Persian, commentary in Persian, quotation, and compositions involving both languages.

Further Reading

Baygi, Sh.M. ‘‘The First Available Persian Interpretation of the Qur’an Known as the Tarjumah Tafsir-i-Tabari’.’’ Hamdard Islamicus19 (1996): 31–44.

Bosworth, C.E. ‘‘The Interaction of Arabic and Persian Literature and Culture in the Tenth and Early Eleventh Centuries.’’al-Abhath27 (1978–1979): 59–75.

Daniel, E. ‘‘Manuscripts and Editions of Bal’ami’s Tarjamah-i Tarikh-i Tabari’.’’ JRAS(1990): 282–321.

Danishpazhuh, M.T. ‘‘Fihrist-i Para-i az Kitabha-yi Akhlaq va-Siyasat bi Farsi’.’’Nashriyya-yi Kitabkhana-yi Markazi-yi Danishgah-i Tihran1 (1961): 211–28.

———. ‘‘Chand Athar-i Farsi dar Akhlaq’.’’Farhang-i Iran-zamin19 (1973): 261–84.

———. ‘‘An Annotated Bibliography on Government and Statecraft,’’ transl. Andrew Newman. In:Authority and Political Culture in Shi‘ism, ed. S.A. Arjomand, 213–39. Albany, NY, 1988.

Lazard, G. ‘‘The Rise of the New Persian Language.’’ InThe Cambridge History of Iran, Vol. 4, The Period from the Arab Invasion to the Saljuqs, ed. R. N. Frye, 595–632. 1975.

Lewis, F. ‘‘Persian Literature and the Qur’an.’’ InEncyclopaedia of the Qur’an, ed. J.D. McAuliffe, vol. 4, 55–66. 2004.

Meisami, J.S.Persian Historiography to the End of the Twelfth Century. Edinburgh, 1999.

Tajarib al-Umam fi Akhbar Muluk al-’Arab wa-l-’Ajam. Istanbul: MS Aya Sofya 3115, Su ¨leymaniye Ku ¨tu ¨phanesi2.

TRANSLATION, PRE-ISLAMIC LEARNING INTO ARABIC

  According to the historian and man of letters Ibn Khallikan: ‘‘Nobody could have had access to the writings of the ancient Greeks, because nobody among the Arabs knew the Greek language.’’ The same declaration could be made about the Persian legacy in other realms of knowledge, such as mirrors for princes. Presented here are only translations from the Greek legacy.

  Several Arabic authors have given accounts at different periods about the knowledge of the Arabs about Greek legacy: al-Ya‘qubi (d. ca. AH 292/905 CE) in sixty five pages of  his History;the Christian physician and translator Ishaq b. Hunayn (d. 299/ 911) in his History of the Physicians and Wise Men (philosophers, above all, before Islam); the Baghdadi logician Abu Sulayman al-Sijistani (d. ca. 375/985) in his Cabinet of Wisdom, of which only an abridgment is extant and published; the bookseller and copyist of  Baghdad Ibn al-Nadim (d. 380/990 or 385/995), in his Index of books and disciplines; the Corduvan Ibn Juljul (d. c. 354/994), in the Classes of Physicians and Wise Men;Sa‘id al-Andalusi (d. 462/1070–1071 in Egypt) in hisCategories of Nations,written in Toledo; the Syrian physician Ibn Abi Usaybi‘a (d. 668/1269) in the Classes of Physicians, parts of which have been translated into French, German, and English; and Ibn Khaldun (d. 808/1406) in hisIntroduction to History. Information is also found scattered in the huge Arabic biobibliographical productions, in marginalia of manuscripts, in commentaries, and in glosses.

  The Syriac-speaking Christians have played a great role as a result of their technical skill in translation of Greek works into Syriac and Arabic. The major translators who flourished during al-Ma’mun’s reign include the (probably Melkite) Christian Yahya b. alBitriq, who is credited with translating into Arabic Plato’s Timaeus,Aristotle’sOn the Soul, On the Heavens,andPrior Analytics, the Book of Animals,and the Secret of Secrets (Sirr al-Asrar), an apocryphal political treatise of unknown authorship that was attributed to Aristotle.

  However, the great translator of this caliphate was the Nestorian Hunayn b. Ishaq (d. 264/873), who was born in Hira in Iraq and, together with his son Ishaq b. Hunayn, his nephew Hubaysh, his pupil ‘Isa b. Yahya, and others placed the translation of Greek medieval and philosophical texts on a sound scientific footing. The chief interests of Hunayn himself were medical, and he translated the complete medical corpus of Hippocrates and Galen. Hunayn and his associates were also responsible for translating Galen’s treatises on logic, his Ethics (the Greek original of which is lost), and his epitomes of Plato’s Sophist, Parmenides, Cratylus, Euthydemus, Timaeus, Statesman, Republic,and Laws,of which only the epitomes of theTimaeus and the Laws have survived in Arabic. The logical and ethical writings of Galen played an important role in the development of Arabic thought, and they have influenced moral philosophers from Abu Bakr al-Razi (Rhazes) (d. 313/925) to Miskawayh (d. 421/1030).

  Of the works of Aristotle, Ishaq b. Hunayn is responsible for translating the Categories, De Interpretatione, On Generation and Corruption, Physics, On the Soul, Nicomachean Ethics, and the spurious De Plantis,which was written by the peripatetic philosopher Nicolaus of Damascus (first century). However, the most important Aristotelian treatise to be translated into Arabic during this period is the Metaphysics, which is known in the Arabic sources as the Book of Lettersor theTheologica (al-Ilahiyat). According to reliable authorities, a little-known translator named Ustat (Eustathius) translated the twelve books (excluding M and N) for al-Kindi, as did Yahya ibn ‘Adi a century later. However, Ishaq, Abu Bishr Matta, and others are also credited with translatin some parts of the Metaphysics.

  Equally important is the translation by Ibn Na‘ima al-Himsi (d. 220/835) of a treatise allegedly written by Aristotle and referred to in the Arabic sources as Uthulugia orTheologia Aristotelis. It consists of a paraphrase of Plotinus’EnneadsIV–VI made by an anonymous Greek author (who could very well be Porphyry of Tyre); together with Proclus’Elements of Theology,known as the Pure Good  (al-Khayr almahd)orLiber de Causis,it was largely responsible for the whole development of Arab-Islamic Neoplatonism. Al-Kindi is said to have commented on the Theologia Aristotelisas did Ibn Sina and others, and al-Farabi refers to it as an undoubted work of Aristotle. A series of other pseudo-Aristotelian works also found their way into Arabic, including Secret of Secrets, De Plantis, Economica, and the Book of Minerals.

  Among other translators of Greek philosophical texts, the Harranean mathematician and astronomer Thabit b. Qurra (d. 288/901) should be mentioned. He translated, among other things, the Arithmetical Introductionof Nicomachus of Gerasa (a masterpiece of translation) and Archimedes’The Sphere and the Cylinder. He further revised many translations made by others, such as Euclid’s Elementsand Ptolemy’s Almagest. Abu ‘Uthman al-Dimashqi (d. 298/910) translated directly from Greek the Topicsof Aristotle, which was translated again by Yahya b. ‘Adi (d. 363/974), this time from Ishaq b. Hunayn’s previous Syriac version. The Syro-Palestinian Greek physician Qusta b. Luqa (d. 300/912) was commissioned for the translation of mathematical and astronomical works, like the Spherics of  Theodosius, the Rising and Setting (of Fixed Stars)by Autolycus, and theLifting Screw by Hero of Alexandria. The Nestorian Abu Bishr Matta b. Yunus (d. 328/940), a skilled logician and the founder of the Aristotelian school in Baghdad, made his translations from Syriac:The Analytica Posteriora,with the commentary of Alexander of Aphrodisias and the paraphrase of  Themistius; the book Lamda of Metaphysica with the commentary of Alexander (which was used by Averroes); and the Ars Poetica. His disciple the Jacobite Yahya b. ‘Adi stands out as the best-known writer about Christian theological questions and ethics in Arabic. He translated logical works of Aristotle and also passages of hisPhysics and Metaphysics, with ancient commentaries. His translation of  Themistius’ paraphrase of De Caelois extant in a Hebraic version. His Christian disciple ‘Isa b. Ishaq b. Zur‘a (d. 395/1008) was also active in translation. Such was the case also for Ibn ‘Adi’s pupil Ibn al-Khammar al-Hasan b. Suwar (d. 407/1017).

Primary Sources

al-Andalusi, Sa‘id.Science in the Medieval World, Book of the Categories of Nations, transl. I. Salem Semaan and Alok Kumar. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1991.

Ibn al-Nadim.The Fihrist of Ibn al-Nadim A Tenth-Century Survey of Muslim Culture, 2 vols., ed. and transl. Bayard Dodge. New York: Columbia University Press, 1970.

Ibn Khaldun.The Muqaddimah. An Introduction to History, 3 vols., transl. Franz Rosenthal, vol. III, 111–70. New York: Bollingen Foundation; Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1967.

Ya‘qubi.Ibn Wadih qui Dicitur al-Ja’qubi Historiae, 2 vols., ed. M.T.H. Houtsma, vol. I, 106–71. Leiden: Brill, 1883;

reprinted, 1969. (Translated, annotated, and corrected by Klamroth, Martin. ‘‘Ueber die Auszu¨ge aus

Griechischen Schriftstellern bei al-Ja’qubi.’’ZDMG40 (1886): 189–233, 612–38; 42 (1888): 1–44.)

Further Reading

Ayalon, Ilai.Socrates in Medieval Arabic Literature. Jerusalem: The Magnes Press; Leiden: Brill (IPTS, X), 1991.

Burnett, Charles, ed.Glosses and Commentaries on Aristotelian Logical Texts. The Syriac, Arabic, and Medieval Traditions. London: The Warburg Institute, 1993.

De Ze´non d’Ele´ea`Poincare´. Recueil d’E ´tudes en Hommage a `

Roshi Rashed, eds. Re ´gis Morelon and Ahmad Hasnawi. Louvain-Paris: Peeters (Les Cahiers du MIDEO, 1), 2004.

Endress, Gerhard. ‘‘Die Wissenschaftliche Literatur.’’ In Grundriss der Arabischen Philologie, vol. II, ed. Helmut Ga¨tje, 400–506; vol. III, ed. Wolfdietrich Fischer, 3–152. Wiesbaden: Ludwig Reichert, 1987 and 1992.

Fakhry, Majid.A History of Islamic Philosophy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2004.

Fraenkel, Gutas Dimitri.Greek Thought, Arabic Culture. The Greco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early ‘Abbasid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th Centuries). London and New York: Routledge, 1998.

Hugonnard-Roche, Henri. ‘‘Les Traductions du Grec au Syriaque et du Syriaque a` l’Arabe (a ` propos de l’Organon d’Aristote).’’ In Rencontres de Cultures, 131–47.

Morelon, Re´gis. ‘‘Une Proposition de Lecture de l’Histoire de l’Astronomie Arabe.’’ InDe Ze´non d’Ele´ea` Poincare´, 237–49;Rencontres de Cultures dans la Philosophie Me´die ´vale. Traductions et Traducteurs de l’Antiquite´ Tardive au XIVe Sie`cle. Actes du Colloque International de Cassino, 15–17 Juin 1989, eds.

 Jacqueline Hamesse and Marta Fattori. Louvain-la-Neuve and Cassino, 1990.

Richter, Gustav.Studien zur Geschichte der A¨ lteren Arabischen Fu¨rstenspiegel. Leipzig: J..C. Hinrischs’sche Buchhandlung (Leipziger Semitische Studien, N.F.,III), 1932

Sezgin, Fuat.Gzeschichte des Arabischen Schrifttum, Vol. VI,Astronomie, 83–96. Leiden: Brill, 1978.

Steinschneider, Moritz.Die Arabischen U¨bersetzungen aus dem Griechischen. Graz: Akademische Druck und Verlagsanstalt, 1969.

‘‘Religion, Learning and Science in the ‘Abbasid Period.’’

InThe Cambridge History of Arabic Literature, 3rd ed., eds. M.J.L. Young et al., Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990

TRANSOXIANA

  The historical core of Central Asia was a region known asTransoxiana,a term that was coined by scholars to describe the location of this region beyond the River Oxus as one approached it from the classical world of Iran (more specifically from its northeastern province of Khorasan). The Oxus (or Oxiana) River, a Latinized form of an ancient Iranian word, was known to the Arabs as Jayhun. It is known today as the Amu Darya (the Amu River); this is based on a local variant, Amu,and the Persian word for lake or sea, darya,borrowed by Central Asian Turkic and with the connotation of river. Beginning east of the Oxus, Transoxiana extended even further eastward to meet the second—although relatively minor—lifeline of Central Asia, the Jaxartes or the Syr Darya. However, despite the connection of the Amu and Syr Darya with the termTransoxianaand the enormous significance of the two rivers in sustaining the culture of the region since ancient times, the historical center of gravity of Transoxiana lay elsewhere. This was along a third river called the Zarafshan, which originates far to the east in the Pamir Mountains, flows further to the west through the Turkestan and Zarafshan ranges, and then flows through the central lowlands of present-day Uzbekistan. Although it ultimately appears to head for a junction with the Amu Darya itself, instead it disappears into the sands of the Kyzyl Kum desert. Irrigation derived from the Zarafshan has supported dense agricultural and urban settlements in Transoxiana since antiquity, and existing cities like Samarqand and Bukhara (Uzbekistan) and archaeological sites such as Penjikent (Tajikistan) are only the best-known examples. In addition to the Zarafshan, several smaller streams such as the Kashka Darya also rise in the southern watershed of the Zarafshan range, flowing southwest and westward, somewhat parallel to the Zarafshan, toward the Bukharan oasis but again disappearing before reaching it. The Kashka Darya has, in turn, nourished historical places such as the Timurid Shahrisabz (Kesh) and Mongol Karshi (Nasaf ). In cumulative effect, through the combination of pockets of great fertility (oases) created by the Oxus, the Jaxartes, the Zarafshan, and their smaller tributaries, Transoxiana was a fertile and important region—a literal gateway, bridge, and bottleneck—that led to the three fascinating worlds beyond: Greater Eurasia, China, and India..

  In addition to demarcating the southern limit of Transoxiana, historically the Oxus River also represented a strong physical border separating Iran from Central Asia; this was a point of concern for all those who desired to cross to the other side, including Alexander the Great, the Sasanian monarchs, the Turks and Arabs, and even the units of the Red Army during the early nineteenth century. It is from this river that the entire surrounding tract, extending from the Amu to the Syr Darya (the Oxus to the Jaxartes), appears to have received its name. It was recorded by Darius in his inscriptions as Sugdam or Sugda, with the Avestan and Greek equivalents as Sughdha or Sogdiana. Likewise, the people who inhabited the area came to be known as the Sogdians, whereas the Zarafshan River itself came to be called the Soghd.

  The Sogdians had resided in Transoxiana for several centuries before the Arab conquests. They spoke an Iranian tongue, because Sogdia, like much of Central Asia before these invasions, was an Iranianspeaking region. Although their language (called Sogdian by some scholars) is now extinct, scholars believe that traces of the rich Sogdian culture still survive in the toponomy of the several towns in the region, whose names end in-kent, -kand, -kat, or other variants of this Iranian word, which means ‘‘town.’’ Appropriate examples are Penjikent, Uzgend, Samarqand, Numijkat (the original name for Bukhara), Tashkent, and Yarkand. In addition, a sizable component of the population of certain pockets of Central Asia still speaks Iranian or speaks both Iranian and Turkic (although some time after the Islamic conquest a shift occurred from Sogdian to Farsi, the language of Fars, a province in southern Persia, which developed into modern Persian). That the Sogdian culture was still intact in the tenth century and to some degree assimilated into the practices and beliefs of Islam is attested to by the accounts of contemporary Muslim geographers who called the country (Sogdiana) the Bilad al-Sughd (Land of the Sogdians) and the Zarafshan river the Wadi al-Sughd (Sogd river). As mentioned earlier, the Arabs used the term Mawarannahr (‘‘that which is beyond the river [Jayhun]’’), for the region of Transoxania, also following the same psycholinguistic process. Employing the Syr Darya as a demarcation line marking the northern limit of Transoxania, all of the land that lay outside of this domain was the Turkestan or the Bilad al-Turk—the abode of the Turkic nomads.

  If Transoxiana was the geographical and cultural core of Central Asia, then southeast of it lay the historical territory of Bactria, home to a sophisticated urban culture, including several urban foundations established by Alexander the Great. Of these, most prominent was the capital of ancient Bactria (the Balkh of early Islamic centuries), which flourished as an important urban center until its destruction by the Mongols in 1221, briefly recovering only to yield primacy to the funerary sanctuary of Mazar-i Sharif. Today Bactria corresponds to northern Afghanistan, southern Tajikistan, and southeastern Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.

  Northwest of Transoxiana and bordering the Aral Sea lay Khwarazm, comprising the lowermost course of the Amu Darya and its sprawling delta estuary fringing the southern shore of the Aral Sea. Khwarazm had since ancient times been home to a flourishing agricultural and urban civilization, typically Iranian in style and character. Medieval Khwarazm functioned as an important commercial link between Eurasia, the Middle East, and Russia, controlling the most important trade routes between the three worlds and stimulated by the Islamization of Central Asia and the rise of Urgench as the chief city in the region from the tenth century onward.

  Two other regions, Ferghana and Khorasan, which also surrounded Transoxiana, should be mentioned here. The Ferghana Valley, located east of the expanded region of Transoxiana, has been a land of an ancient agricultural civilization, colonized early by Sogdian merchants. Today most of Ferghana lies within the easternmost province of the republic of Uzbekistan, except for fringes shared by neighboring Kyrgystan and Tajikistan. To the south of Transoxiana lies the province of Khorasan. In pre-Islamic and early Islamic times, it comprised a large area, including central Turkmenistan and northwestern Afghanistan and the cities of Nisa, Merv, Nishapur, and Herat. By the Middle Ages, several of these cities lay on the Silk Road’s trunk routes linking Sinkiang through Samarqand as well as routes going to Bactria, India, Khwarazm, and Russia. Khorasan was the focus of the Arab invasions before Transoxiana, and, in several ways, it set the stage for sociocultural developments elsewhere.

Further Reading

Barthold, Wilhelm.Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion. London: Porcupine Press, 1928.

Frye, Richard.The Heritage of Central Asia—From Antiquity to the Turkish Expansion. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 1998.

Jacobson, Henry.An Early History of Sogdiana. Unpublished Masters thesis. Chicago: University of Chicago, 1935.

Knobloch, Edgar.Beyond the Oxus: Archeology, Art and Architecture in Central Asia. London: Ernest Benn Ltd., 1972.

Le Strange, Guy.The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate. London: Frank Cass & Co, 1966.

Pumpelly, Richard, ed.Explorations in Turkestan—Expeditions of 1904, Vols. 1 and 2. Washington, DC: Carnegie Institution of Washington, 1908.

Soucek, Svat.A History of Inner Asia. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Tucker, Jonathan. The Silk Road: Art and History. Chicago: Art Media Resources, 2003.

TRAVEL

  By 750 CE, the era of the conquerors and empire builders was over in Islam. A new historical figure, as mobile but more peaceful, began to roam around: the traveler. A multifaceted figure, he may have been a merchant, a scholar, an ambassador, a missionary, or an adventurer. To this, one must add the ritual wanderer, such as the mystic. This new figure was a creation of the cities. He was a city dweller, either by choice or by origin, and, when the city was not his starting point, it became his horizon.

  One traveled in the medieval Muslim world by foot or by horse, individually or collectively, by caravan as well as by boat. Some of these medieval travelers seem like true athletes. After finishing their ‘‘grand tour’’(jawla), they earned—deservedly—the name of ‘‘tourist’’ (jawwaˆl). Such travelers did not hesitate to seek out physical challenges even if it meant riskingtheir lives. The Iranian Abu ˆ Haˆtim from Rayy (died AH 277/890 CE), who was destined to a prestigious career as transmitter of hadith, is one such example.  In the travelogue transmitted by his son, he narrates: ‘‘The first time I traveled, I did it for seven years. I walked for more than one thousand parasangs [5700 kilometers] before I stopped counting. After I left Bahrayn, I walked to Egypt, from which I left on foot to Syria [...]. I did all this when I was not yet twenty years old.’’ One of his contemporaries, an Andalusian who had accomplished a grand tour under the same circumstances, was also proud to repeat to anyone who cared to hear, ‘‘All the masters toward whom I traveled, I went to meet them on foot.’’ Touring the central lands of Islam, the Persian philosopher poet Naˆsir-ıˆKhusruˆ reached Jerusalem in 1047, accompanied by his brother and a young slave via the caravan of Harran. From the third of all holy places of Islam, he decided to go to the first two and undertook the trip on foot in the company of other travelers who shared the same resolve. The group’s guide was ‘‘an energetic man, good walker, and with an agreeable physiognomy.’’ (Safar-nama, 106). The trip to Mecca took thirteen days. The Persian scholar seems to have undertaken this walking journey as a challenge. This was not always the case for him or for the other trekkers mentioned earlier. When the same scholar set out to travel by foot across the Arabian Peninsula to go to Basra, that was because he had no other choice; he and his brother did not have enough means to rent two camels. After having paid the guide who was to lead them, they could only afford to pay for one camel: ‘‘the Bedouin loaded my books on the camel that my brother would ride, and as for me, I followed on foot’’ (223). To cover more than eighteen hundred kilometers under such conditions could only make the crossing of desert lands, already perilous in itself, only more arduous: ‘‘When we reached Basra, we were in such a state of destitution and misery that we looked like madmen; we had not untied our hair for three months. Who would let us into a bath in the state we were in?’’ (237).

  In vast territories, such as those of Islam, that are covered by some of the world’s largest deserts and vast steppes, the camel is the best means of transportation. Travelers who do not depart alone or within a small group travel with a caravan. The caravan is indeed the surest link between cities. Like a city in motion, the caravan has its own emir to guide and manage it and its own troop to protect it, especially against robbers. According to Naˆsir-i Khusru ˆ, during the mid-eleventh century, the caravan that left from Cairo for the great pilgrimage (hajj) required so many soldiers that the daily expense to cover their needs and fodder was one thousand Maghribi dinars, not including the twenty dinars spent for each soldier’s pay. Multiply these daily thousands of dinars by the twenty-five days it took to reach one’s destination (and as many to return), add sixty thousand dinars to cover provisions for pilgrims and travelers, and it becomes clear that a caravan is a vast economic undertaking before being a means of transporting goods from one town to another or from one country to another.

  One did not only travel by land, but also by sea. The traveler at times had to use a ship to go from one point to another, although it was the most feared means of transportation. The medieval Muslim world was a land-loving one that kept its back turned to the sea for most of the time. Only a few regions had established maritime traditions, including the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Aden (al-Andalus). Everywhere else, the thought of crossing the sea conjured up images of terror and the throes of a horrible death. The great Iraqi traveler and encyclopedist, Mas‘udı (d. 345/956) experienced it first hand with sailors from Oman during his crossing of the Gulf of Aden on hisway to Zanzibar: ‘‘I sailed on this sea leaving Sinjar, capital of Oman, in the company of Sirafian captains [from Sı ˆra ˆf, the main harbor of the Persian Gulf], including Muh. B. Zaydabud and Jawhar b. Ahmad, also called Ibn Sıˆra who later perished with his entire crew. My last sea crossing, going from the island of Qanbalu ˆ [Zanzibar] to Oman, goes back to 304/916. I was on board a ship owned by Ahmad and‘Abd’l-Samad b. Ja‘far al-Sı ˆra ˆfıˆ [...]. These two brothers later disappeared body and soul in the very same sea [...]. I may have sailed on many a sea, the China Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Red Sea, and the Sea of Yemen, yet I have known none more perilous than this Sea of Zanzibar’’ (The Meadows of Gold, I, 94). All those who encountered the fortune of the sea said the same thing about their own place of peril. Thus, the other great traveler of the year 1000, the Palestinian geographer Muqaddasıˆ, said it about the Mediterranean Sea in more apocalyptic terms: ‘‘It is a difficult, tumultuous sea that continually roars, especially during the night of [Thursday to] Friday.’’ That is because it was thought that the sea was hostile toward Muslims. This revolt from the sea of the infidels can be explained by the following tradition: ‘‘[...] When He created the sea of Shaˆm (Syria), God made this revelation: ‘I created you, and I will hand you over my servants who, wishing to obtain some favor, will say ‘‘Glory be to God!’’ or ‘‘God is Holy!’’ or ‘‘God is great!’’ or ‘‘there is no other divinity but God!’’ ‘How will you treat them?’—‘Well, Lord, answered the sea, I will drown them!’—‘Away from me! In truth I curse you! I will make you less beautiful and less bountiful!’ ’’ (Ahsan al-Taqasım,43). All of the medieval travelers who have left behind tales of their ‘‘going into the sea’’ have compared it to a cemetery (or, more exactly, to a coffin) from which they miraculously escaped. Yet, despite all of the dread and terror (for one must add to the misdeeds of nature those of men, especially of pirates who hounded each and every sea), the travelers did not hesitate to board a ship; they had little choice if they wanted to go to India or China for commercial reasons. At times they did not hesitate to board infidel ships, as did the Andalusian Ibn Jubayr (d. 614/1217) to go on a pilgrimage to Mecca. The ulemas from alAndalus had endorsed traveling on board of Christian ships as early as the eleventh century, although one could have gone from al-Andalus to the Orient by way of  land, through the Maghreb. The reading of alBakrıˆ’s (d. 487/1094) Description,however, shows the chronic insecurity that ruled over itineraries such as those linking the Maghreb to Egypt, making it clear why the Andalusian geographer’s compatriots saw traveling by sea—even aboard infidel ships—as a lesser evil.

  This information about traveling during medieval times comes via writings composed mostly by the travelers themselves, especially the most learned ones. The latter, however, took a long time before deciding to write down their travel experiences. This attitude would not change until the end of the ninth century, even if the oldest travel description goes back to 851, it being the work of an Iraqi merchant who was familiar with India and China.

  Why is it that the scholars of the eighth and ninth centuries, who traveled often and extensively, did not think of putting their experiences down in writing? One theory is that they did not think that the story was the prime condition of the trip. To travel and to write about it is a motion that took time to develop in Islam. Nonetheless, a look at the great traveling scholars of the ninth century shows that their travel accounts were heavily circulated within their own milieu. A chain of learned solidarity perpetuated the travelers’ oral souvenirs from mouth to ear. Here and there, an attempt at literalizing oral narratives was made. Still tentative, this literary shaping borrowed its narrative expression from the khabar. Thus, the Iraqi Abu ˆ Khuzayma (d. 243/857) was able to preserve in his Book of Sciencefragments of the travel account from one of the first—if notthe first—peripatetic scholars of Islam, Mak’huˆl (d. 112/730). He had obtained the account from one of his Syrian masters, who himself had acquired it from a direct disciple of the traveler who had died in Syria (this is factually known). Other travel accounts were obtained in a similar fashion, by trusting the scholarly memory or even the family memory.

  The travel khabar offers the dual characteristic of being, in its organizing principle, a reported and fragmented narrative in which the author–transmitter is not confused with the traveler–narrator. Because it is in bits and pieces, it must dramatize in a few words or sentences the entire arc of a trip; it therefore must be a story worth telling. To achieve this, it must stir strong emotional feelings that will make up for its fragmentary aspect. Where can such emotions be found? In the realm of the extraordinary and the wonderful. In the same way that the ‘aj’ib (wonders), which were part of the Islamic knowledge, had been feeding the instructive as well as the entertaining literature since the ninth century, the travel khabar ran into their writing since its inception. Moreover, many travel accounts of this type are ‘aja ’ib ( tales of wonder). The ‘aja ’ib found a place in the travel account as processes of the similar and dissimilar rhetoric, because they act as translators of the difference. As figures of the extraordinary, however, they do not imply that one leaves the space of Islam to go experience them and then recover them through travel writing. Similarly, the ancient Greeks did not have to leave their cultural world to go meet with thethoma(the wonder-curiosity), nor did the men of the medieval western world to go discover themirabilia.Thus, it is understandable that a travel account that does not include any ‘aja’ib is not really a travel account. The medieval Muslim reader always expects from the person who is relating his travels that he will tell about what he has seen and/or heard that was the most ajıˆb—the most curious, the most extraordinary, the most wonderful. Thus, the pseudo-Shaˆfi‘i tells in his travel story a work from the tenth century about his having seen in Yemen conjoined twin sisters united within ‘‘the one body of a normal woman who, instead of having one trunk, had two distinct ones, with four hands, two heads, and two faces.’’ After one died, ‘‘[her body] was solidly tied, from the top to the bottom, with a rope and thus kept until it rotted away; after which it was cut and buried.’’ As for the ‘‘body left alive,’’ she kept on ‘‘coming and going through the souks.’’

  By the end of the ninth century, the travel account still had not found a stable and lasting literary frame. It would borrow that of the epistle, a literary genre that appeared toward the mid-eighth century and that would be its host for about two centuries. Unfortunately, the most ancient travel epistles are known to us only through allusions, citations, or fragments snatched out of oblivion and waste by the hazards of the compilation. For example, the epistle written by an Andalusian scholar at the turn of the ninth and tenth century is known only because mention is made of it in the biographical dictionaries of the Muslim west. Of its contents, only one recommendation survived from the writer who had endured many hardships away from his country and that he transmitted to his fictional, or real, addressee: never undertake a long trip! The epistle by a Hamadhan judge from the Seljuq era is also known as a result of a biographical dictionary compiled during the twelfth century. Written in 1040, this epistle allowed its writer to depict what he saw, such as the great mosque of Damascus, and the men he met. Fortunately, some travel epistles have reached us in their entirety. One of them is the epistle that the physician Ibn Butlaˆn (d. ca. 455/1063), a Christian from Iraq, devoted to describing his itinerary from Baghdad to Cairo. Most of these travel epistles articulate their writing around what was seen and heard. The two epistles from Abuˆ Dulaf, who traveled across India and China around  942, are the most representative of this writing with the eyes. An entire trend of travel epistle, however, kept on rendering, as was done in the ninth century, what the traveler–writer had heard. One representative epistle of this trend is that of Ibn ‘Abba ˆd (d. 385/995) to a scholar from his hometown of Rayy, destined as he was to a political career as a vizier. During a studying trip to Baghdad around 958, the young Ibn ‘Abbaˆd frequented the intellectual circles and the literary salons of the ‘Abbasid capital. This epistle did not survive in its entirety, but its literary success was such that a contemporary succeeded in reconstituting it by reassembling most of its membra dijecta.

  When back home in Seville, after his return from the Orient, Abu ˆ Bakr b. al-‘Arabıˆ(d. 534/1148) wrote a rihla (account) and thus started a revolution in travel writing at the dawn of the twelfth century. Born four centuries earlier, the rihla, which had been sheltered until then by the inventory of masters (mashyaka or fahrasa), the biographical dictionary (tabaqat), the epistolary narrative (risala), and the diary (ruznamja), could finally abandon them and move into a genre in its own name: that of the travel rihla. From then on, the way is paved for the great travel narratives in which the Muslims of the Muslim west would more than excel, from Ibn Jubayr (d. 614/ 1217) to Ibn Battuˆta (d. ca. 770/1368).

Further Reading

Bulliet, R.The Camel and the Wheel. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 1975.

Charles-Dominique, P.Voyageurs Arabes: Ibn Fadlaˆn, Ibn Jubayr, Ibn Battuˆta et un Auteur Anonyme. Paris, 1995.

Eikelmann, D., and Piscatori, J.Muslim Travellers: Pilgrimage, Migration, and the Religious Imagination. Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1990.

Fernand, G.Relations de Voyages et Textes Ge´ographiques Arabes, Persans et Turcs Relatifs a` l’Extre ˆme-Orient, du VIIIe au XVIIIe Sie`cle, 2 vols. Paris, 1913–1914. (Reprint, Frankfurt: F. Sezgin, 1996.)

Goitien, S.D.A Mediterranean Society: The Jewish Communities of the Arab World as Portrayed in the Documents of the Cairo Geniza, 5 vols. Berkeley, 1967–1986.

Hadj-Sadok, M. ‘‘Le Genre de laRihla.’’Bulletin des E´ tudes Arabes40 (1948): 196–206.

Kratchkovskii, I.J.Arabskaı¨a Geografitcheskaı¨a Literatura, 3 vols. Moscou-Leningrad, 1957.

M’Ghirbi, S.Les Voyageurs de l’Occident Musulman du XIIe au XIVe Sie`cle. Tunis, 1996.

Miquel, A.La Ge´ographie Humaine du Monde Musulman Jusqu’au Milieu du XIe Sie`cle, 4 vols. Paris, 1967–1975.

Netton, I.R.Thought and Travel in the House of Islam. Richmond, Va, 1996.

Netton, J.R., ed.Golden Roads. Migration, Pilgrimage, and Travel in Medieval and Moderne Islam. London, 1993.

Picard, Ch.La Mer et les Musulmans d’Occident au Moyen Age. Paris, 1997.

Saˆlih al-Dı ˆn and ‘U. Haˆshim.Taˆrıˆkh al-Adab al-Jughraˆfıˆ,3 vols. Beirut, 1987.

Touati, H.Islam et Voyage au Moyen Age. Paris, 2000.

Udovitch, A. ‘‘Time, the Sea and Society: Durations of Commercial Voyagers on the Southern Shores of the Mediterranean During High Middle Ages.’’Princeton Near Eastern Papers31 (1981): 503–63

TULUNIDS

  The Tulunids were a semi-autonomous Turkish dynasty that ruled Egypt and Syria from approximately 868 to 905 CE. These rulers served officially as ‘Abbasid governors but, in fact, wielded broad authority and sometimes came in conflict with the caliphs whom they claimed to serve. They followed in this manner the example of other semi-independent families of governors, such as the Aghlabids and the Tahirids, who previously ruled in North Africa and Khurasan, respectively.

  Ibn Tulun, the founder of this dynasty, came to Egypt in 868 as part of the entourage of his stepfather Bakbak, the ‘Abbasid governor of Egypt. He survived the assassination of his stepfather and outmaneuvered his rivals shortly afterward to gain control of the province. He took advantage of disturbances in Syria to create a powerful personal army and campaigns against the Byzantines to extend his authority eastward. His administrative skill, moreover, established firm foundations for his successors at the time of his death in 884.

   Ibn Tulun’s son, Khumarawayh, who succeeded him, was able to extend the dynasty’s dominions to include the Jazira. However, a reinvigorated ‘Abbasid caliphate, internal dissension among his ministers, and financial exhaustion undermined his military achievements. Khumarawayh was assassinated in 896, as was his son and successor, Jaysh. Another son, Harun, ruled until 905. The ‘Abbasids shortly afterward seized control.

  The Tulunids mark the rise of non-Arab groups to power in the Near East and, in particular, a Turkish military elite in Egypt. The family descended from a military slave who served at the court of al-Ma’mun. Turkish military slaves were not only renowned for their fighting skills but were considered very loyal. They owed their position and privileges entirely to the caliph. They lacked the ties of kinship that divided the sympathies of Arabs and Persians.

  The decline of the ‘Abbasid caliphate allowed the Tulunids to establish themselves. Intrigue at the court, revolts of the Zanj in southern Iraq and the Saffarids in eastern Iran, and general financial exhaustion during this period dissipated the caliphate’s energy. Ministers and generals often intervened in caliphal succession by supporting weak candidates for the benefit of their interests. Caliph al-Mu‘tamid’s brother, al-Muqaffaq, emerged as the predominant force behind the caliph in the 870s, but he remained preoccupied with suppressing the Zanj until the 880s.

  The Tulunids posed a fundamental problem for the legitimation of government. Originally proteges of the caliph, they lacked an ethnic and ideological constituency upon which they could draw immediate support. They countered this weakness by maintaining nominal allegiance to the caliph in Baghdad, allying themselves carefully with local commercial and religious interests and recruiting slave soldiers. They inscribed the name of the caliph on their coinage, appointed important Egyptians to ministerial posts and consulted others, and bought large numbers of Sudanese slaves. In addition, they promoted campaigns against Byzantiun under the auspices of holy war against the infidel.

   The quickness with which the Tulunids succumbed to ‘Abbasid forces probably resulted from their inherent political weakness. However, although the ‘Abbasids eventually recovered and reestablished their authority over Egypt and Syria, the precedent of the Tulunids remained for a later Turkish dynasty of semi-independent governors, the Ikhshidids, who came to power in Egypt in 935.

  Egypt and the Levant appear to have prospered under the Tulunids. It has been suggested that this prosperity reflected the expenditure of taxes locally rather than their remittance to Baghdad. Ibn Tulun established an efficient bureaucracy that earned the respect of local Arabs. He also established a new quarter near Fustat, where he erected a famous congregational mosque that still stands today.

Further Reading

al-Balawi.Sirat Ahmad ibn Tulun, ed. Kurd ‘Ali. Cairo.Gordon, M.S. ‘‘Tuˆlu ˆnids.’’ InThe Encyclopedia of Islam, 2nd ed., vol. X., 616–8. Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1999.

Hassan, Z.M.Les Tulunides. Paris, 1937.

Ibn Sa‘id al-Andalusi.Kitab al-Mughrib fi Hula al-Maghrib, ed. K.L. Tallquist. Leiden, 1899.

———.al-Mukaˆfa’a. Cairo, 1941.

Kennedy, H.The Prophet and the Age of the Caliphates, 309–13. London and New York, 1986.

Randa, E.W.The Tuluˆnid Dynasty. PhD dissertation. University of Utah, 1990.

al-Tabari.Ta’rikh al-Umam wa-l-Muluk. Cairo, 1962.

TURKISH AND TURKIC LANGUAGES

  Modern Turkish and its predecessor, Ottoman Turkish, belong to the Turkic language family, the speakers of which were and are spread over a wide area of Europe and Asia (Eurasia). Those areas and the Turkic languages spoken in those areas are Turkish and Azeri in the Middle East; Turkmen, Uzbek, Uygur, Kazak, and Kirgiz in Central Asia; Altay, Khakas, Tuvan, and Yakut in Siberia; and Tatar, Bashkir, Chuvash, and various Turkic dialects like Gagauz in East Europe. Some of these Turkic peoples are the dominant population in their own independent countries, including the Republic of Turkey and the Turkic Republics of Central Asia, and others have their own autonomous regions within Russia and China. Other countries with substantial Turkicspeaking populations include Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Bulgaria, and Greece. The total number of speakers within this family may be estimated at between 150 and 170 million, with Turkish speakers making up by far the largest group of about 70 million.

  According to the famous Turcologist Wilhelm Radloff, there is no other language family in the world with the same geographical magnitude as the Turkic languages. Despite the immense number of Turkic languages and dialects spread out all over the word, the linguistic difference between these languages is quite amazingly minimal, with the exception of Yakut and Chuvash. For a long time, scholars have been trying to classify the Turkic languages to no avail, because no single classification has yet been agreed on. The difficulty comes from the fact that a tremendous amount of work still needs to be done with regard to collecting and interpreting data from these languages, some of which have only recently been discovered. In addition, vastly different political concerns over the course of time have left their own mark on these efforts as well. For example, a great majority of Turcologists from Turkey still insist on a single Turkic language with numerous ‘‘dialects,’’ with Turkish being the ‘‘Turkic of Turkey.’’ This argument in many cases evokes an ultra-nationalist and expansionist ideology suggesting the existence of a so-called ‘‘Turkic world.’’ In reality, despite the linguistic proximity, the speakers of the Turkic languages of the world enjoy a great diversity of history, cultures, and traditions, and they rarely identify themselves as ‘‘Turks’’ but rather as Tatars, Uzbeks, Kazaks, Azeris, and the like.

  Despite the tremendous difficulty of classifying Turkic languages and dialects, one may consider then following picture in future attempts of classification: Turkish and the closely related Azeri and Turkmen form the Oguz group of Turkic languages. The ancestors of those who speak these languages migrated from Central Asia into the Near East beginning in the first half of the eleventh century. By 1300 CE or so, the Osman clan of the tribes had laid the foundation of what would become the Ottoman State (1299–1923). The other Turkic languages fall into several historical and linguistic groups: Karluk (Uzbek, Uygur); Kipchak (Kazak, Kirgiz, Tatar, Bashkir); Uygur (Tuvan, Yakut); and the entirely separate branch of Turkic, Ogur (Bulgar, Khazar), which is represented by the modern Chuvash.

  Beginning already during the eighth century, before Turks had migrated out of East Asia and into Central Asia, several literary languages were formed. The first of these was written in the so-called Runic script and survives in a number of stone inscriptions from Mongolia and South Siberia and also in manuscripts discovered in Western China (modern Xinjiang). During the same period, a distinct literary language called Uygur took shape in the Turfan area of modern Xinjiang. That language was written in Runic, Uygur, Manichaean, and Brahmi scripts. From this language survive texts dealing with the Manichaean, Nestorian, and Buddhist religions as well as with civil and economic affairs, dating from the eighth century up to the fourteenth century, and in some areas into the eighteenth century. Meanwhile, to the west in Central Asia starting in the eleventh century, a related literary language arose. Written in Arabic script, this language came to be called Chagatay and was used by Muslim Turks not only of Central Asia but in a variant form in the Crimea and Volga regions until the twentieth century. After many of these Turkic areas were incorporated into the Soviet Union, their spoken languages became bases of national languages written first in Latin, then in Cyrillic, and today mostly in Latin alphabets again. In the case of the Uygurs of China, the literary language is written in a highly modified Arabic script.

  The formation of the Turkish literary language in Anatolia (known as Old Anatolian Turkish) goes back to approximately the thirteenth century, although some so-called ‘‘mixed-language’’ manuscripts belong to even earlier centuries. The construction and development of written Turkish in Anatolia cannot possibly be identified and studied without dealing with perhaps the most significant cultural and political change in Turkish history: the acceptance and proliferation of Islam. Institutionalized Islam not only brought a brand new belief system and sedentary social norms to the Turkishspeaking authors but also greatly reshaped the lexical and philosophical vocabulary of their language. After converting to and/or embracing Islam (beginning approximately toward the end of the ninth century), an educated minority of the Turkish-speaking population began to develop a literary language that was enhanced with a compelling amount of borrowings from the Arabic and Persian languages. The construction process of the Old Anatolian Turkish literary language also necessitated the adaptation of the Arabic script. The infiltration of the Arabic script into the writing of Turkish was a religious, cultural, and ideological constraint. The place of the Arabic script in Turkish literary history is undoubtedly most significant, given the fact that, up until 1928, almost every single Turkish book was composed in it. Nonetheless, although the Arabic alphabet was only one among more than a dozen documented writing systems used in scripting Turkic languages throughout the centuries, it was perhaps the most unsuitable of all of them. The script was incapable of representing the phonetic needs of the Turkish language. Although a similar argument later became the foundation for the modernist revolution in Turkey, which successfully replaced the Arabic script with a new Roman-based alphabet, there is little or no doubt among linguists that the modern Turkish writing system is by far much easier to learn, more practical, and more democratic. One can argue that the use of the Arabic alphabet constituted one of the fundamental reasons for the mostly illiterate population of the Ottoman Empire. During its six hundred year lifespan, the Ottoman Empire had a very low literacy rate, due in part to the ‘‘holy script’’ with which no more than thirty thousand books were ever printed. It should be remembered that the literary products of the Ottoman elite were transmitted through manuscripts, and, generally speaking, only those who could afford to possess them had access to the classical works in writing.

  By the end of the fifteenth century, Old Anatolian Turkish was already a refined literary language. Beginning with the sixteenth century, what is usually called Ottoman Turkish or Classical Ottoman became the Latin of the Turks. Classical Ottoman was not only a peculiar combination of the Arabic, Persian, and Turkish literary lexicons but of a particular grammatical system as well. In some cases, it manifested itself as a mixture of Arabic and Persian words that were constructed according to the Turkish language syntax. It was not used by the common (and, for the most part, illiterate) people, and it survived for hundreds of years as the symbol of the cultivated, learned, and literary members of the glorious Ottoman court. By the end of the seventeenth century, classical Ottoman authors began showing a conscious interest in the Turkification and localization of Ottoman Turkish for use in their otherwise courtly works. Especially during the eighteenth century, developments in this regard were highly significant. The spoken language (and, in some cases, the written language as manifested in thousands of surviving folk manuscripts) of the vast majority of the Turkishspeaking populations in Anatolia was vastly different. However, it should also be mentioned that, since the 1980s, postmodern scholarship on the subject and proponents of various political positions particularly the Islamist one have been engaging in a rather  different argument regarding this linguistic and literary dichotomy, basically interpreting it as the ‘‘invention’’ of the modernist ideology of the early twentieth century.

Further Reading

Johanson, Lars, and Csato, Eva, eds. The Turkic Languages. London: Routledge, 1998.

Lewis, Geoffrey.The Turkish Language Reform: A Catastrophic Success. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1999.

TURKS

  The name Turks generally applied to various Turkicspeaking peoples living between Eastern/Chinese Turkistan (Sinkiang) and the Balkans. The first mention of the ethnonym Turkmay date from Herodotus’ (c. 484–425 BCE) reference to Targitas (IV.5), the first king of the Scythians, or to the Iyrcai people (IV.22). During the first century CE, Pomponius Mela refers to the Turcae (I.116) in the forests north of the Sea of Azov, and Pliny the Elder (Natural History, VI.19) lists the Tyrcae among the people of the same area. The first definite references to the Turks come mainly from Chinese sources in the sixth century. In these sources,Turkappears asT’u-chu¨ehand referred to a diverse group of nomadic Turkic speakers who lived north and west of Chinese territory.

  Seventh-century Chinese sources preserve the earliest legends of the origins of the Turks, saying that they were a branch of the Hsiung-nu (Huns) and living near the ‘‘West Sea’’ (perhaps the Caspian) or that they were from the country north of the Hsiung-nu, were descended from a man born of a wolf, and first came to the Chinese border to trade for silk. Modern research tends to indicate that their ancestors indeed lived within the state of the Hsiung-nu in the Trans-Baikal area and that they later, during the fifth century, migrated to the southern Altay.

  The Turks first appear in history in 552 CE, when Bumın established the Turk Empire, a kind of tribal state, that stretched from the northern marches of China west to the Central Asian territories of Sasanid Iran. Eventually, this empire and the Sasanids clashed over control of the silk trade. In the 580s, internal strife resulted in a rift between the Eastern and Western Turks. During the first half of the seventh century, both nominally submitted to Chinese authority. In 682, the Eastern (Go¨k/Blue) Turks established a new empire in Mongolia and attempted to include the Western Turks, but by 711 the latter had broken away. The heartland of the Western Turks was between the Eastern Karatau Mountains and Jungaria. The oldest extant Turkish texts, the Orkhon inscriptions found in Mongolia and dating from the mid-eighth century, shed light on these events.

  On the eve of the Islamic penetration of their region, the Western Turks were overwhelmingly nomadic but had a strong interest in trade. Most were probably shamanists, whereas others were adherents of Manichaesim, Nestorian Christianity, or, especially, Buddhism. Having destroyed the Sasanian Empire (see Sasanians, Islamic Traditions) in 642, the Muslim Arab armies reached the Oxus (Amu Darya), the traditional border between Iran and Turan, by 674 and began raids into Central Asia. In 751, these armies reached Talas, near modern Dzhambul, where they defeated a Chinese army and firmly established Islam as the major political and cultural force in the area.

  Although initiated by the Arabs, the conversion of the Turks to Islam was filtered through Persian and Central Asian Iranian culture. Most Turks converted through the efforts of missionaries, Sufis, and merchants. At the same time, Turks entered the Muslim world proper as slaves, the booty of Arab raids and conquests. Under the Umayyads, most were domestic slaves; under the ‘Abbasids, increasing numbers were trained as soldiers. By the ninth century, Turkish commanders were leading the caliphs’ Turkish troops into battle, and the caliphs’ Turkish guards were making and unmaking the caliphs themselves. As the ‘Abbasid caliphate declined, Turkish officers assumed more and more military and political power. They took over or established provincial dynasties with their own corps of Turkish troops. Ibn Tulun (868–884) made himself virtually independent in  Egypt and Syria. This process culminated when the Turkish commander Sebuktigin (977–997), who was born a pagan, established the Ghaznavid Sultanate controlling Afghanistan, eastern Iran, and northern India.

  Meanwhile, Islam made great strides among the Turks in Central Asia. Around the mid-tenth century, the Qarakhanids, a Turkish dynasty that arose from a tribal confederation in the ninth century and ruled theregion from Eastern Turkistan to Transoxania, became, at least nominally, Muslim. They promoted a Turkish cultural consciousness and the first Muslim Turkish literature. Also around the mid-tenth century, a certain Seljuk, the leader of the Oghuz confederation who came from the steppes north of the Caspian and Aral seas, came to Jand on the Jaxartes (Syr Darya). Subsequently, Seljuk and the Oghuz adopted Islam. In 1040, his grandsons Chaghrı; and Toghrıl defeated the Ghaznavids at Dandanqan near Merv, establishing the Seljuk Empire and opening the Middle East to the first massive immigration of Turks. Henceforth, until the fall of the Ottoman Empire, almost every major ruling dynasty in the Muslim world was to be of Turkish origin.

Further Reading

Barthold, W.Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion, 3rd ed. London: Luzac, 1968.

Bazin, L. et al., ‘‘Turks.’’ InEI2 Bosworth, C.E.The Ghaznavids, 2nd ed. Beirut: Librairie du Liban, 1973.

———. ‘‘Barbarian Incursions: The Coming of the Turks into the Islamic World.’’ In Islamic Civilization, 950– 1150, ed. D.S. Richards, 1–16. Oxford, UK: Cassirer, 1973.

Gibb, H.A.R.The Arab Conquests in Central Asia. New York: AMS Press, 1970.

Golden, Peter B. ‘‘The Karakhanids and Early Islam.’’ In The Cambridge History of Inner Asia, ed. Denis Sinor, 343–70. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.

———.An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz, 1992.

Sinor, Denis. ‘‘The Establishment and Dissolution of the Tu¨rk Empire.’’ InThe Cambridge History of Inner Asia, ed. Denis Sinor, 285–316. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1990.