Arabic and European Andalusi Histories in early-20th century Hyderabad Deccan: Loss, Temporality and Translation

Abstract

My paper looks at early-20th century Urdu translations of Arabic and European histories of Al-Andalus produced by translators at the Bureau of Translation and Composition within the newly constituted Osmania University which touted itself as the first modern institution with Urdu as its medium of instruction. These histories comprised medieval Arabic historiography (compiled and edited in modern print format in universities across Germany, Spain, and France) and 19th century German, French, and Spanish Orientalist ones. I ask—how did these translators situate themselves as ethical subjects compelled to translate? My paper closely reads their voluminous prefaces to these translations for how they understood the task of translation within what I call a burdensome modernity. I closely read for affective registers (loss, shame, despair— but also hope, excitement, and anticipation of futures) that these translators invoke to locate their difficult and painful task of reaching back to a Muslim past in medieval Spain that they deem their own, but through the unavoidable route of European Orientalist scholarship. In this context, I argue against translation as a passive activity within colonial power equations, and for a more complex understanding, whereby colonized subjects were able to powerfully offer new affective, temporal, and geographical orientations (to borrow Sarah Ahmed’s term) to familiar power dynamics between Europe and colonial South Asia through translation.