An exhibition commemorating the 200th anniversary of the publication of Alexander Pushkin's "Imitations of the Quran" cycle has opened at the Kazan Museum of Islamic Culture. Calligraphers have specially created pieces for the project featuring quotations from the poet's rendition of the holy book, often called a "phenomenon of the Russian spirit." But there's another symbolic parallel: Pushkin's lineage traces back to an African prince who was a vassal of the Turkish sultan — a precursor to the special connection built over centuries between Russian literature and the Islamic world. Although Alexander Pushkin's prose has been translated more frequently, avoiding complex poetry, it is precisely this communication that continues to play a vital role in fostering rapprochement and cultural understanding between the peoples of Russia and the Muslim East.
Interest in Russian literature in the Islamic world arose simultaneously with the emergence of translation there. The starting point can be considered the 1830s, when the School and Bureau of Translation, headed by the educator Rifa'a al-Tahtawi, were established in Egypt under the ruler Muhammad Ali. True, the focus of Egyptian attention at that time was Western European, primarily French, literature — it was considered closest to the sophisticated tastes of local readers. The first Russian works began to penetrate Arab culture only in the 1860s, and then initially through intermediary languages.
A different situation developed in the Palestine-Syria region. Here, thanks to the network of schools and seminaries of the Imperial Orthodox Palestine Society, a group of translators working directly from Russian emerged. Educational institutions in Damascus, Homs, and Nazareth, with their libraries and Russian teachers, nurtured an entire generation of future writers. A graduate of such a school, Khalil Beidas, completed one of the first documented translations in 1898 — Pushkin's "The Captain's Daughter." Later, another graduate, Salim Cobain, translated "The Blackamoor of Peter the Great," works by Maxim Gorky, and even wrote "The Teachings of Tolstoy" — but all this in Egypt, where the cultural center of the Arab world had shifted. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, during the An-Nahda period, Cairo became a hub for the intelligentsia emigrating from Syria, Palestine, and Lebanon.
A native of Homs, Antoine Ballan received an excellent theological education in Russia and later taught for many years in his hometown. An analysis of his translations of Anton Chekhov vividly highlights the characteristic features of the early translation school. Russian realities were adapted to local equivalents familiar to Arab readers: for example, "ruble" became "riyal," names were replaced with Arabic ones, and epithets typical of the region ("heavy guest" instead of simply "guest"), paired synonyms, and ornate turns of phrase were introduced into the texts. There were genuine successes ("swimming in shallow water" became the expressive "his arms are short") as well as inevitable losses: complex dialogues and internal monologues were often simplified to the point of retelling, Christian idioms were omitted or replaced with Muslim ones, and sometimes added where they were not present in the original.
In the Muslim East, Chekhov was perceived primarily as a humorist, thanks to his short story form, which was ideal for newspaper publication. Ballan's translations were published in the magazine An-Nafais al-Asriyya (Modern Jewels), edited by Khalil Beidas. Thanks to its low subscription price and skillful selection of materials, the publication gained popularity and a wide circulation, introducing Russian writers to the Arab world. Significantly, Russian also served as a conduit for Arabic translators, including Ballan, to Western literature — Mark Twain and Oscar Wilde, for example.
By the 1950s, interest in Russian literature had already spread to Syria, where the Arab Awakening publishing house published "The Captain's Daughter," and to Egypt, which remained the cultural center of the Muslim East. However, most works, especially poetry, were still translated indirectly, from English or French. Due to the difficulties of conveying rhyme, rhythm, and cultural subtext, many Russian classics — Fet, Tyutchev, Yesenin — remained inaccessible to Arab readers for a long time.
A true breakthrough came in the 1970s and 1980s, when graduates of Soviet universities returned to Arab countries. In Egypt, diplomat Sami al-Drubi left behind benchmark translations of Pushkin's prose. Hasab al-Sheikh Ja'far, Malek Sakkur, and Diya al-Ubaydi, who published around 50 articles on Pushkin in Arabic periodicals, worked in Syria and Iraq. The Soviet publishing houses Progress and Raduga played a crucial role in popularizing the classics, supplying high-quality translations abroad.
But poetry remained a stumbling block. It's important to understand: an absolutely accurate rendering of verse is fundamentally impossible — due to phonetics, cultural realities, and the inevitable desire to preserve rhyme, which often forces the translator to sacrifice meaning. A comparison of three Arabic translations of Yesenin's "Letter to His Mother," completed in the 1980s by Abdul-Rahman Al-Khamisi from Egypt, Hasab Ash-Sheikh Jafar, and Hayat Sharara from Lebanon, clearly demonstrates the differences in approaches.
Al-Khamisi preserves the beauty and musicality: the Arabic words sound natural and do not undermine the meaning, despite the liberties taken for the sake of rhyme. Ja'far's translation is precise in its rendering of individual metaphors but suffers from errors in understanding the original and the subtext. Hayat Sharara's translation suffers from excessive literalism, which loses the poetic breath. The conclusion is obvious: when translating from Russian into Arabic, simple knowledge of the language is woefully insufficient. The main difficulties are rooted in the profound differences in the worldviews and perceptions of peoples.
A special role in the development of translation from and into Arabic belongs to the Soviet orientalist Ignatius Krachkovsky, the author of the most scholarly translation of the Holy Quran into Russian. Even before the theory of translation as a discipline was established, he meticulously analyzed errors in various works, attempting to find ways to preserve nuances of meaning. Reflecting on translations at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, Krachkovsky noted that the An-Nahda period was characterized by a "free handling of the original," sometimes verging on arbitrariness. The concept of adequate translation and the capture of the "spirit of the original" only emerged in scholarship in the second half of the 20th century.
It's clear today that it's impossible to accurately convey figurative content without fully considering the cultural, historical, and psycholinguistic differences between peoples. Only this approach allows us to avoid simple retelling and construct a fully-fledged literary text in the target language, capable of resonating with the reader.
From Krachkovsky's theory to the practice of the new millennium: large-scale presentations and Days of Russian Language and Literature are planned in the Middle East in 2026. This is an unprecedented project: a collection of Russian classics translated into Arabic by specialists from the Chechen State Pedagogical University. Around 40,000 copies will be donated to libraries and universities in the Middle East. From Khalil Beidas, who first introduced Arabs to "The Captain's Daughter," to the present day, the Russian word has followed the same path: to a reader who awaits and understands. And all of these are not just books, but a visible sign of the economic and cultural rapprochement that Russia and the Islamic world are experiencing today.
GSV "Russia - Islamic World"
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