Alfurkan Tatarski. Der litauisch-tatarische Koran-Tefsir by Paul Suter (review)

Abstract

Reviews Suter, Paul. A/furkan Tatarski. Derlitauisch-tatarische Koran-Tefsir. Bausteine zur slavischen Philologie und Kulturgeschichte. Neue Folge, Reihe A: SlavistischeForschungen,Band 43. Bohlau, Cologne, Weimar, Vienna, 2004. xxi + 555 pp. Illustration.Tables. Notes. Bibliography.?59.90. PAUL SUTER'S 2000/01 ZurichUniversitydoctoraldissertation(Habilitationsarbeit ) breaksnew ground in the studyof LithuanianTatarmanuscripts,revived recently by the latest works of Galina Miskinene [Miskiniene] (200I) and HenrykJankowskiand CzeslawLapicz (2000). While followinghis Belarusian and Polish predecessors, who all outgrew from Anton Antonovic's work of I968, Suter dubbed the correspondingdisciplinekitabistik(a) (p. 3). This term is coined afterthe Arabic kita-b, 'book', used indiscriminatelyin the Slavicized form kitaby by the LithuanianTatarsto denote most of theirrecordsin Arabic writing. The title of this book, dedicated to the Lithuanian Tatars, is noteworthy. While referringto a Polish translation of the Koran of c. i 6oo (pp. 2I-22), Suter borrowed the title from a Polish polemic work, A(furkan tatarski,aimed against the Tatar Muslims, which was published by an anonymous author under the pseudonym 'Piotr Czyzewski' in the early seventeenth century. The overridingargumentof Suter'sstudyis that, unlike other West European translationsderived from Robertus Cetensis's translation of II43, A(furkan tatarski was originallytranslatednot into Belarusian,as has been commonly maintained in the kitabistika, but into Polish from the Arabic original, although the external format was most likely patterned on Persian,centralAsian and Ottoman sources(pp. 34, 84-93, I26). The above thesis is indirectly reflected in certain passages of the Risale-i ratar-iLeh(I558), in Guillebert de Lannoy's account of 142I and Ibrahim PeqevT'sHistory (seventeenth century). In addition, Suter undertakes a philological, cultural and linguistic analysis of five manuscripts from the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries, four of them the so-called tefsirs(Arabic 'commentary on the Koran'), housed in London, St Petersburgand Minsk, and one kitab in the collection of the BritishMuseum. The book has eighteen chapters, divided into numerous sections, and a bibliography.Unusual for a workof this scope is the lackof eitheran index of lexemes or an index of names, even though the author discussesin detail the culturaland historicalunderpinningsof the said manuscripts,transcribedby him in whole or in part (pp. 370-534). One may divide the book into three parts.The first,covering chaptersone to eight, gives a historicaloverviewand a brief survey of sources, while putting the literaryoutput of the Lithuanian Tatars, and especially their Polish translation of the Koran, into a broad (Central) European context (pp. 3-134). The second part, comprising chaptersnine to sixteen, discussesthe transliterationof the Tatarmanuscripts under consideration, and sketches the phonetic and morphological system of the northern regional version of Polish used in the above tefsirsand one kitab (PP. I35-70). Finally, the third part comprises chapter seventeen, containing transcriptionsof some of the said manuscripts(pp. 370-534), and REVIEWS 509 chapter eighteen and an addendum with excerpts from Ottoman Turkish records. In his introductorychapter one, Suter offersa traditionalclassificationof theLithuanianTatartexts,which ispatternedonJakob Szynkiewicz'sclassical typology of 1935. Suter suggests, however, that we distinguishbetween the tefsir,an interlinear translation of the Koran into Polish, and the kitabs, referringto the other Slavic-language texts written by Lithuanian Tatars in Arabic script (p. 9). Suter notes, and rightly so, a difference between the LithuanianTatartexts,which have alwaysbeen circulatedin manuscript,and the alham#jado writings in Bosnia-Herzegovina and other Balkan countries, where Muslim speakersof Serbo-Croatian created an Islamic literaturewith Arabic script(pp. I2-I 6). Most arrestingin chapterone is a discussionof the language questionin the Grand Duchy of Lithuaniaas reflectedin earlyTatarmanuscripts.Being less innovative in this respect, the author claims that the competition between Polish and Belarusian in these manuscripts was determined by the overall diglossiain the statein the sixteenthcentury(p. i o). Accordingly,the primary language of tefsirswas Polish, while the kitabswere written in Belarusian, although Polishaddenda in the kitabs were heavilyBelarusianized(p. i i). The latter diglossiais aptlyplaced by Suter in the culturaland religiouscontext of the Grand Duchy as reflected in polemical writings and publications in defense of differentChristiandenominations and the role of Slavic languages in these debates (pp. 94- I34). The thesis about Polish as a primarylanguage of the tefsirs contradictsthe assumption,suggestedby VjaceslavIvanov at the I 3th InternationalCongress of Slavists in 2003, about the ecclesiastical function...