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27 - Translating Iconoclasm: Sino-Muslim Azharites and South-South Translations

from Part V - World Literature and Translation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 August 2021

By
Michael Gibbs Hill
Edited by
Debjani Ganguly
Debjani Ganguly
Affiliation:
University of Virginia
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Summary

This chapter takes up a small part of the writings of a group of Muslim intellectuals from China who studied at Al-Azhar University in Cairo in the 1930s and 1940s and worked to think through the connections between China, Islam, the Arab world, and literatures in Chinese and Arabic. Through a close reading of Recollections of Childhood (Tongniande huiyi), Ma Junwu’s translation of the first volume of Taha Husayn’s The Days (al-Ayyām), we see how the Sino-Muslim Azharites provide a valuable historical example and theoretical resource for our own scholarly practice at a time when attempts to go beyond the boundaries of national literatures and languages default all too quickly to monolingual approaches.

Keywords

TranslationTaha HusaynChinese literatureArabic literatureMuslims in ChinaAzhar University
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge History of World Literature , pp. 513 - 526
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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