Translapt

Iranian Studies Conference in Utrecht

Last week, Philip Bockholt attended the Fifteenth Biennial Iranian Studies Conference, held at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Organised by the Association for Iranian Studies, the conference brought together more than 400 speakers to present research on the linguistics, literature, history, politics, and religions of Iranian and Persianate regions. Philip Bockholt presented a paper titled “Reading Ibn Khallikān’s Wafayāt al-Aʿyān in Persian: Translation Practices in Late Fifteenth-Century Western India”, which examined the Persian translation of this important work of Islamic scholarship, with a particular focus on the translator and the circumstances in which the translation was produced.

This is the link to the event page: https://associationforiranianstudies.org/conferences/2026/information

Lecture on the Astronomical Dialogue of Mongol Eurasia

On 28 July, Yoichi Isahaya (Hokkaido University) gave a guest lecture on the astronomical dialogue of Mongol Eurasia in Münster. In the lecture, he discussed the relationship between Islamicate astronomy and its Chinese counterpart, focusing on their intersections and cross-cultural influences across distinct intellectual traditions during the thirteenth century. As Isahaya argues, contact between these traditions did not result in the translation of astronomical works per se; yet, this reflected not an instance of failure but a specific type of cultural policy pursued by the Mongol Empire. After the lecture and discussion, the event concluded with a joint visit to the local restaurant Pinkus Müller.

This is the link to the profile page: https://src-h.slav.hokudai.ac.jp/center/profile-e/isahaya-biocv/index.html

Research at the British Library

This week, Philip Bockholt has been conducting research at the British Library on Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and Chagatai texts. His work focuses on manuscripts dating from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries, including the Persian hagiographical work Ṣafvat al-ṣafā and an autograph manuscript by the Mughal princess Jahānārā Begum. The visit has offered an invaluable opportunity to engage with the British Library’s outstanding manuscript collections and research facilities. It has also provided a stimulating scholarly environment in which exchanges with colleagues and fellow researchers may arise, sometimes quite unexpectedly.

This is the link to the library's website:
https://www.bl.uk/

Newly Published: Texts as Living Objects

Published by Brill (Leiden and Boston), "Texts as Living Objects: Dhayls and Knowledge Transmission in the Islamic World", edited by Sacha Alsancakli and Philip Bockholt, brings together nine studies on dhayls (supplements) and textual transmission across the Islamic world. Covering Arabic, Persian, Turkish, and Samaritan Hebrew materials, the volume explores how texts were expanded, adapted, and reinterpreted across regions and centuries. By considering supplements alongside commentary, translation, and other forms of textual modification, it offers a renewed understanding of dhayls as cultural and historical phenomena.

This is the link to the publication: https://brill.com/display/title/18632?contents=toc-136066

The International Medieval Congress in Leeds

This week, Philip Bockholt participated in the International Medieval Congress (IMC) in Leeds, United Kingdom, Europe’s largest forum for sharing ideas in medieval studies. Drawing medievalists from more than 60 countries, the IMC features over 2,000 individual papers, as well as public concerts, performances, excursions, book fairs, and more. Together with Marie Jaros (Halle), he co-organised two panels on “Whales in the Middle Ages” and gave a paper entitled “Whales in the Islamic Encyclopaedic Tradition: Depictions in Qazwīnī’s Wonders of Creation across Languages.”

This is the link to the event page:
https://www.imc.leeds.ac.uk/

Concluding the Chagatai Reading Course

After a week of lectures and discussions on diverse Chagatai (or Türkī) materials, the Chagatai Reading Course, which took place in Münster last week, came to an end. Bringing together five instructors, thirteen participants, and the TRANSLAPT team, the reading course proved to be an intriguing event, featuring Turkic texts from a broad variety of contexts and offering insights into many genres and registers, ranging from historiography and poetry to nineteenth- and twentieth-century archival sources, medical and talismanic treatises, and craft manuals. With the conclusion of this event, the TRANSLAPT team looks forward to future activities and continued engagement with Chagatai as an important part of the multilingual mosaic of Western and Central Asia during the early modern period.

History and Medicine

On Friday, 3 July, László Károly, professor in Turkic languages at the Department of Linguistics and Philology, Uppsala University, concluded the Chagatai reading course with an exploration of historical and medical texts. More specifically, he guided the students through a selection of Abū’l-Ġāzī Khān’s Şajara-i Türk and an anonymous Risālā-i Şifāʾ al-Abdān, hereby focusing on issues of historical philology, contact linguistics and lexicography. In the afternoon, three students presented their research on Chinese and Sogdian loan words in Middle Turkic languages and OCR of historical Tatar newspapers.

This is the link to László Károly's profile page: https://www.uu.se/en/contact-and-organisation/staff?query=N16-521

Reading Vernacular Sources: The Crafts’ risāla

On Thursday, 2 July, Jeanine Dağyeli, associate professor at the Department of Near Eastern Studies of the University of Vienna and research fellow at the Institute of Iranian Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, shifted the focus from ghazals to craft manuals, her area of expertise. Under her guidance, the group read two manuscripts from the Biruni Institute, dealing with gilkārlar (plasterworkers) and āhanggarlar (smiths) respectively. The afternoon session featured discussions of gender norms as discursively constructed in early 20th-century Turkistan sources, of talismanic and devotional practices as recorded in the Jarring Collection, and of the Turkic version of the 1873 Russia-Khiva Peace Treaty.

This is the link to Jeanine Dağyeli's profile page: https://www.oeaw.ac.at/en/ifi/institute/staff/research-staff/jeanine-dagyeli

How to Read a Classical Ghazal

On Wednesday, 1 July, Benedek Péri, head of the Department of Turkic Studies of Eötvös Loránd University in Budapest, guided the students through the difficult process of learning how to read and appreciate a classical ghazal, using concrete examples taken from the divans of ʿUbaydī and Navāʾī. The afternoon session featured a discussion of materials relating to Chagatai popular narrations in a manuscript kept at the Bodleian Library.

This is the link to Benedek Péri's profile page: https://www.btk.elte.hu/en/staff/benedek-peri

Reading Chagatai Poetry by Navāʾī

On Tuesday, 30 June, Marc Toutant, a researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS/CETOBaC) and lecturer at INALCO, introduced the group to the text type of mas̱navī in Chagatai. Specifically, the working session dealt with a work by the famous ʿAlī Shīr Navāʾī (d. 906/1501), titled Ḥayrat al-Abrār. The group read a selection of poetic apologues found therein and translated these sections, also addressing their linguistic peculiarities as well as specific poetic structures by making use of the available reference works. The afternoon session featured a discussion of Chagatai materials provided by a participant, focusing on the poetic texts surrounding manuscript illustrations.

This is the link to the Marc Toutant's profile page: https://cetobac.ehess.fr/membres/marc-toutant-0