Why read Islam Translated?

Book cover of Islam Translated: Literature, Conversion, and the Arabic Cosmopolis of South and Southeast Asia

Book description

The spread of Islam eastward into South and Southeast Asia was one of the most significant cultural shifts in world history. As it expanded into these regions, Islam was received by cultures vastly different from those in the Middle East, incorporating them into a diverse global community that stretched from…

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Asian history

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Why read it?

1 author picked Islam Translated as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Iris Idelson-Shein

Author

I stumbled upon Ronit Ricci’s captivating book while finalizing my own research on early modern Jewish translation in Europe. The experience of reading this book was a little like (what I can only imagine) discovering an unknown relative on 23andme must feel like.

Ricci explores the literary networks that developed during the spread of Islam through early modern South and Southeast Asia. She shows how translators from Arabic into Javanese, Malay, and Tamil developed a remarkably creative approach to translation and how they domesticated (“localized” is her preferred term) their sources, reshaping unfamiliar concepts to resonate with their target readers.…

From Iris' list on translation and culture.