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•^Translator's Prefaced
When I was first asked to translate an eleventh century
Arabic manuscript, I suspected it would be a daunting task.
Arabic is a living language, with many dialects as well as a
modern standard form. It has continued to grow (and
sometimes shrink) as the necessities of the age required.
Translating historic texts has always required a historical
knowledge of Arabic as a language. Words change their
meaning depending on when they are spoken or written, where
they are spoken or written, and sometimes by who speaks the
word. The theologian, for example, may use Arabic words with
more specific intent, as a lawyer today might, than for example,
the average author.
With this in mind, I was nevertheless surprised at the
difficulty of translating a medieval work on astrology. Muslims
have historically had a very embracing attitude to the pursuit of
knowledge and the various scientific disciplines often
intersected one another. Ghayat Al-Hakim was at once a
metaphysical, philosophical, theological and a scientific work
whose language borrowed meaning from each of these
disciplines.
Translating this work became a many-layered obsession. To
translate a work, you must first understand it. Although this
may seem obvious, far too many works are translated as a
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