Islamic dogmatic texts in Pyotr Tolstoy’s translation of «The History of the Present State of the Ottoman Empire»: the first fixation of adhan in Russian literature

Abstract

The article discusses supposedly the first fixation of the text of the adhan in Russian literature, which is found in the Russian translation of Paul Ricaut's treatise entitled «The History of the Present State of the Ottoman Empire». This translation was made from the Italian version by Pyotr Tolstoy during his stay in the Ottoman Empire in 1702–1714. Already in the English edition of the treatise of 1686 there are errors in the transliteration of the Arabic text of adhan, and its meaning is not fully conveyed. For the English reader, only takbir and shahada were translated, that are the most characteristic dogmatic formulae that Europeans could be familiar with from the other sources. The number of transliteration errors has increased in French and Italian translations. In the Polish translation, transliteration errors were corrected, but the gap in the transmission of content was not filled. Pyotr Tolstoy, not being an orientalist, did not make an attempt to critically comprehend the distorted transmission of Arabic fragments in the Italian translation of Historia and did not fill in the missing readings in the translation, for example, by attracting informants who knew the language and basic tenets of Islam. This is also not done during the re-preparation of the Russian translation for publication in 1741, and the Polish translation, which was partly used at that time for verification, was not referred in this case. Previous experiences of transmitting basic Islamic formulae also remain unfamiliar to Tolstoy, which is not surprising, given their fragmentation and occasional nature.