Ibrahim al-Yaziji (

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C. E.Watson; Walter ...

ابراهيم اليازجي, ''Ibrahim al-Yāzijī''; 1847–1906) was an Arab Christian philosopher,

philologist Philology () is the study of language in oral and written historical sources; it is the intersection of textual criticism, literary criticism, history, and linguistics (with especially strong ties to etymology). Philology is also defined as th ...

, poet and journalist. He belonged to the

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population of the

Mutasarrifate of Mount Lebanon The Mount Lebanon Mutasarrifate (1861–1918, ar, مُتَصَرِّفِيَّة جَبَل لُبْنَان, translit=Mutasarrifiyyat Jabal Lubnān; ) was one of the Ottoman Empire's subdivisions following the Tanzimat reform. After 1861, there ...

Biography

He was born in 1847 to a family originally from Homs. He was an editor of several newspapers and magazines, such as ''Nagah'' and '' At-Tabib''. Al Yaziji founded '' Ad-Diya'' magazine which was published between 1898 and 1906 in Cairo. He was instructed by

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to translate the

Bible The Bible (from Koine Greek , , 'the books') is a collection of religious texts or scriptures that are held to be sacred in Christianity, Judaism, Samaritanism, and many other religions. The Bible is an anthologya compilation of texts ...

into

. The translation, which took place from 1876 to 1880, was published and said to be linguistically richer than the first translation of the Protestants. It was the second Bible translation in the Arabic language. The first translation was approved by the American

Protestant Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that follows the theological tenets of the Protestant Reformation, a movement that began seeking to reform the Catholic Church from within in the 16th century against what its followers perceived to b ...

missionaries under the leadership of the missionary Cornelius Van Dyke, a professor at the American University of Beirut, along with two Christian Lebanese writers and philologists,

Butrus al-Bustani Butrus al-Bustani ( ar, بطرس البستاني, ; 1819–1883) was a writer and scholar from present day Lebanon. He was a major figure in the Nahda, which began in Egypt in the late 19th century and spread to the Middle East. He is cons ...

and

Nasif al-Yaziji Nāṣīf bin ʻAbd Allāh bin Nāṣīf bin Janbulāṭ bin Saʻd al-Yāzijī (; March 25, 1800 – February 8, 1871) was a Lebanese author at the times of the Ottoman Empire and father of Ibrahim al-Yaziji. He was one of the leading figures in ...

, Ibrahim al-Yaziji's father. Their

translation appeared in 1866. Among al-Yaziji's more well-known intellectual and ideological commitments was "championing Arabic as the bond of identity, over religion, among those for whom the language is a common tongue." This was sociopolitical project on the rise more broadly during the Arab renaissance (''nahda''), which took place around the turn of the 20th century. Al-Yaziji advocated for secular Arab identity, based on language, "explicitly and famously" during his lifetime. One of Yaziji's most significant innovations was the creation of a greatly simplified Arab font. By reducing Arabic character forms from 300 to 60 he simplified the symbols so that they more closely resembled

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

characters. It was a process that contributed to the creation of the

typewriter A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...

. The Bible translations of Bustāni, Nasif al-Yaziji and Ibrahim al-Yaziji were the first in modern Arabic language.

Literature

* Raif Georges Khoury: Importance et rôle des traductions arabes au XIX siècle comme moteur de la Renaissance arabe moderne. In : Les problématiques de la traduction arabe hier et aujourd’hui. Textes réunis par Naoum Abi-Rached. Strasbourg 2004. 47–95. * Raif Georges Khoury: Quelques remarques sur le rôle des libanais dans la renaissance arabe moderne. In : Romanciers Arabes du Liban. Hrg. Edgard Weber. Toulouse 2002. 7-48.

References

Bibliography

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Yaziji, Ibrahim 1847 births 1906 deaths 19th-century writers from the Ottoman Empire Lebanese people of Syrian descent Arabs from the Ottoman Empire Philosophers from the Ottoman Empire Writers from Beirut Translators of the Bible into Arabic 19th-century translators Lebanese magazine founders