In case you were wondering...

A few weeks ago one of my professors held a lecture about how the conquering Arabs in the 7th century assimilated the local culture of their conquered peoples and built upon it, as opposed to enforcing their own brand of culture on them. During the 'Abbasid rule that began in the 8th century after their predecessors, the Umayyads, were defeated, there was a large and systematic translation movement that lasted about 200 years. Works by such thinkers as Aristotle and Euclid were read and taught in society. I think Euclid's work was one of the first translations, actually. The movement was so regulated that the translators were even sent to Constantinople in search of specific Greek works to translate into Arabic. It is this rummaging about in the city of Constantinople that sparked my interest, and voilá, I am now writing my ten-pager about the Graeco-Arabic translation movement. It is fascinating, and a great deal more complicated than I have let on.

And as I was reading Dimitri Gutas' Greek Thought, Arabic Culture yesterday, it reminded me that before I even got into this program at the university, I had wanted to study the spread of language and its ensuing effects on surrounding cultures and other languages around the Mediterranean region. I realized that I get to do that anyway! And why it interests me, I cannot tell you. It just does. So details like Alexander the Great's destruction of Persian texts and knowledge (after he had translated the ones he wanted into Greek) that caused the scattering of scraps of Persian texts to India (perhaps even to China) in order to save them from obliteration, somehow get stuck in my head. It is an occupational hazard I welcome, because I have 0 of 10 pages written!

So in case you wondered at some point about the sort of things I am studying, now you know!