THE CONTRIBUTION OF DEOBANDI SCHOLARS TO ARABIC TRANSLATED WORKS: AN ANALYTICAL STUDY

مساهمة علماء ديوبند في المترجمات العربية، دراسة تحليلية

Abstract

This paper illuminates the activities of Deobandi scholars in translating their works into the Arabic language and examines the effect that the translations had on spreading Islamic thought in the Arab world. The study outlines the immense contribution of Deobandi scholars to the study and presentation of a rich and varied intellectual tradition that included creed (aqidah), jurisprudence (fiqh), hadith, Quranic exegesis (tafsir), logic, and philosophy. It also brings out the role of the translations in enhancing academic and cultural exchange between the Arab world and India. Using the descriptive-analytical approach, the analysis of the texts under translation under consideration is conducted regarding style and content. The results indicate that the impact of Deobandi scholars in the Arabic translation has provided a significant epistemic bridge, which is a measure of the depth of their intellectual tradition and the accuracy of their scholastic approach. The works that would be considered in the analysis are just a representative of the best examples of the Arabic translation of the Deobandi scholarship; the scale of the corpus is so huge that only a small part of the literature that they translate could be studied.