This paper explores the theoretical approaches to translation and the dynamics of language politics during the ʻAbbāsid-era translation movement through the lens of three prominent figures of the ʿAbbāsid era, Ḥunayn ibn Isʹhāq, Mattā bin Yūnus and al-Jāḥiẓ. In conversation with Emily Apter's concept of untranslatability and current concerns about translation into and out of Arabic, this paper examines the cultural implications of claims to translatability and untranslatability. The ʿAbbāsid era presents a particularly useful comparison to the present because rather than being marginal, Arabic was the language of an expanding empire, and also because the ʿAbbāsid era was a kind of 'Golden Age' of translation. The ʿAbbāsid era was an enormously productive period, with translators rendering nearly the entirely corpus of available Greek manuscripts into Arabic. This outpouring of translation activity not only provided an influx of new ideas but provoked a wide-ranging debate among the literati of the time about the possibilities and problems of translation. Examining the figures of al-Jāḥiẓ, Mattā bin Yūnus and Ḥunayn ibn Is'hāq provides a window into this theoretical conversation. Al-Jāḥiẓ, as one of the foremost authorities on Arabic rhetoric, gave voice to more than one view of translation, in part defining Arabic writing as too unique to be translated while elsewhere claiming translations from other languages as the inheritance of the Arab culture. The Aristotelian translator Mattā bin Yūnus provides an example of backlash against translation in which foreign ideas were seen as a threat to Arab identity. Ḥunayn ibn Is'hāq, one of most highly regarded translators of his day, reveals a pragmatic approach to translation which integrated Greek works into Arab society. These three figures reorient the poles of translatability and untranslatability, revealing the potential of both to strengthen hegemony, and show the positive and negative aspects of an Arabocentric and Islamocentric universalism. / text

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This study examines the development of poetic language in modem Arabic poetry through discussion of a selection of twelve poems from Bilād al-Shām (Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine), applying a method of analysis and evaluation based on a close study of the text itself rather than on critical sources. A practical method of analysis is used to examine elements of poetic language, namely rhythm, theme and structure, the poet's voice, word-association, metaphor and symbol, all of which form the text. The study is introduced by a brief review of the development of modem Arabic poetry, of previous studies of poetic language in modem Arabic poetry, and an analysis of the poetic language in four outstanding poems of the post-second world war period. The four poems were chosen since they are typical of die changes, renewal or departure from classical poetic language. These poems embody new forms in both expression and ideas, and express the Arab identity by discussing Arab social and political problems. The four poems may not be the best poems of their time but each one clearly exhibits a different use of elements of poetic language current at the time. These poems, which are written before and during 1967, are still effective and influential today. Their poetic language is still the criterion by which to examine and compare the twelve selected poems in part two. The poems were chosen from those composed in Bilād al-Shām after the events of 1967. This choice was made to enable die writer to investigate die effect of the war upon poetry, to illustrate pan-Arabism and nationalism, and to examine the poetic language in these poems. In both part one and part two my concern is to present facts rather than arguments. My intention is also to make a brief comparison and conclusion. These conclusions - drawn from the discussion - are found in part three. This study deals with the following: the identification of common factors and differences in the poems discussed; the existence, or lack, of creative trends in the use of language; the degree of influence of the four poems upon the twelve selected poems; and whether die twelve poems imitate ideas, concepts, words and symbols derived from the four poems. It also traces the development of poetic language as it approaches the prose style and as it establishes a different use of metaphors and symbols.

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The Jahili poets esteemed verity as opposed to verisimilitude as their principal aesthetic criterion. I have long been convinced of this. This thesis represents an attempt to enucleate several features of their verse by drawing on various spheres of knowledge, acquaintance with which is fundamental to a proper appreciation of the pre-Islamic qad sidah as poetry. My concern has been with matters zoological, philological, literary and socio-historical. It is a critical shibboleth (both occidental and oriental) that the ancients Arabs were unlettered; yet writing looms large in their verse. It is a modern datum that Jahili verse is oral poetry; yet this is not the only explantion for the recurrence of conventional phraseology and expression. Chapter One is a preliminary incursus into an investigation of writing among the early Arabs. It is also a study of the literary development of a nexus of topical comparisons, viz. the deserted encampment. A socio-historical interpretation of the shift in emphasis perceptible in these comparisons is offered, conjoined with the suggestion that the phenomenon of the `Bedouin is an incremental paradigm, the presence of which is less distinct in early Jahili verse than has been supposed. Extended similes in which a camel is compared with an oryx bull or doe or a wild ass have tended to be neglected by scholars, who rely on an, at times but poorly formed, subjective impression, referring to the stylized or mannered nature of the tableaux. I have tried to demonstrate that, although in their several features narrative consuetude is discernible, a proper understanding of the vignettes depends largely on the given poetic context. The ethology and ecology of the ass and the oryx have been studied in order to shed light on their poetical manifestations: verse has proved to be consistent with science. Chapter 4 sets forth a comparison of the parodical style of Arkhilokhos of Paros and al-N=abighah of the tribe of Dhuby=an, to which an instance of parody from the Middle English alliterative tradition has been appended.

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