Title: Translation, geography, and the Divine Word
Description: This dissertation explores the role of translation in the formative stages of Islamic intellectual history. Our analysis is based on two case studies drawn, respectively, from the fields of descriptive geography and Qur'anic exegesis. Central to both studies is an examination of how translation has served as a strategy for engaging with the 'marvelous.' Arabic and Persian descriptive geography follows an established discourse concerning the wonders ( 'aja'ib ) of the world, mixing together ancient Greek models with Islamic cosmographical and eschatological material. Central to the 'aja'ib tradition is the place of translation in mediating monstrous alterity. The first study traces the cultural history of one such 'wonder' tale, taken from the account of a ninth-century 'Abbasid mission headed up by a translator ( tarjuman ) to discover the apocalyptic wall of Gog and Magog mentioned in the Qur'an. This adventure appears in a wide range of Arabic and Persian material and is indicative of larger patterns of comprehending cultural and linguistic difference. Throughout the sources, translation emerges as a repeated topos for mediating and sublimating the marvelous alterity of creation.

The second study focuses on the debates, anxieties, and practices surrounding the translation of the Qur'an, deemed God's miraculous and inimitable ipsissima verba, in the formative periods of Islam. This section focuses on the frontier regions of Iran and Transoxiana to the east and the Iberian Peninsula to the west. Persian translations of the Qur'an develop prominently between the tenth and twelfth centuries as vehicles for the articulation of group identity. This is highlighted through formalized translations undertaken by all the major Islamic legal schools ( madhahib ) in the region. While later Spanish translations starting in the fifteenth century show marked similarities to these earlier Persian models, there are significant differences in regards to the larger socio-historical context and the lack of official Islamic institutions to sponsor such translations. More than just the transference from one language to another, translation at a basic epistemological level has served as a sustained vehicle for engaging with alterity. Taken together, these two case studies highlight the paradigmatic role of translation in Islamic salvation history, where geography and scripture so clearly coalesce.