Lords or Idols?: Translating the Greek Gods into Arabic in Nineteenth-century Egypt

Raphael Cormack

Abstract

In 2015, Dr Sayyid ʿAli Ismaʿil published a new edition of the text of a long-lost Arabic translation of Offenbach’s (1818–80) opera La Belle Hélène. His subtitle described it as ‘the first play published in Arabic in Egypt, in 1868’. He added, in the book’s title, that it was ‘an unknown literary work by Shaykh Rifaʿa al-Tahtawi’.¹ The history and circumstances of the original publication and the role al-Tahtawi (1801–73) played in its translation, which is probably more complicated than Ismaʿil allows, reveal much about the workings of literary translation in the mid-nineteenth century in Egypt. These issues

Citation

Raphael Cormack. (2019). Lords or Idols?: Translating the Greek Gods into Arabic in Nineteenth-century Egypt. In M. Booth (Ed.), Migrating Texts: Circulating Translations around the Ottoman Mediterranean (211-235). Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474439015-011

• Online Publication Date: May 3, 2019
• Publication Date: May 3, 2019
• Deposit Date: Jan 22, 2025
• Publisher: Edinburgh University Press
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Pages: 211-235
• Series Title: Edinburgh Studies on the Ottoman Empire
• Book Title: Migrating Texts: Circulating Translations around the Ottoman Mediterranean
• Chapter Number: 6
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1515/9781474439015-011
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/2989772