Kahire'den Avrupa'ya Açılan Kapı: Medresetü'l Elsün (Diller Okulu 1835)
Keywords:
Madrasatu’l-Alsun, History of Cairo, The School of Languages, Educational-Cultural History of Egypt, Translation Activities of the Late Ottomans, Rifâ‘a Râfi‘ al-ŠahšâwAbstract
Translation activities in the late Ottoman territories/geographies have not been examined in depth despite the fact that they played a significant role during the modernization process. This article attempts to explore one of the important in- stitutions of Egyptian modernizaiton, the Madrasatu’l-Alsun (The School of Lan- guages) established by Mehmed Ali Pasha in Cairo in 1835, and its role as the nexus of translation activities in Egypt during the 19th century. The School of Languages was opened for the training of French teachers for the primary schools, as well as with the intend of training translators who would be engaged in the systematic transla- tion of works written in European languages into Arabic. The article also compares the School of Languages translation activities with those which were simultaneously evolving in Istanbul in the same period. The article also provides information on the translators and their works, along with the biographical detail on the founder of the School of Languages, al-Šahšâwî (1801-1873), and emphasizes the role that newspa- pers, magazines and various professional organizations played in disseminating these translations.
