In "From Babel to Dragomans," Mr. Lewis discussed how an earlier work of his had been translated and published in Hebrew by the Israeli Ministry of Defense and in Arabic by the Muslim Brotherhood, a fundamentalist group.
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At 12, as he prepared for his bar mitzvah, he realized that Hebrew was actually a language with grammar, not an "encipherment of prayers and rituals," he wrote in "From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East" (2004).
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Mortality postponed, he turns his attention toward the fate of his college — the University of the Family Universal, or U.F.U. (the old name, Holy Family College, sounded "too Catholic," Boyagoda writes) — and then a problematic attraction to his predatory ex-girlfriend, Wende, a consultant hired to save the college by (a) turning it into an elder-care assisted living facility and (b) partnering with an academic group in a fictional war-torn Middle Eastern country called Dragomans.
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Thomas Cook promised, "Dragomans and other necessary servants and food supplies are carefully selected and provided".
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In the Turkish tradition, the dragoman position is recorded in the pre-Ottoman Sultanate of Rum during the 13th-century reign of Keykubad I when two dragomans and two translator clerks were appointed.
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From 1711, of many former Grand Dragomans or Dragomans of the Fleet to the positions of princes (voivodes or hospodars) of the Danubian Principalities of Wallachia and Moldavia. These four offices formed the foundation of Phanariote prominence in the Ottoman Empire. The Phanariotes maintained this privileged position until the outbreak of the Greek Revolution in 1821: the then Dragoman of the Porte, was beheaded, and his successor, Stavraki Aristarchi, was dismissed and exiled in 1822. The position of Grand Dragoman was then replaced by a guild-like Translation Bureau, staffed initially by converts like Ishak Efendi, but quickly exclusively by Muslim Turks fluent in foreign languages.
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Webster's Dictionary of 1828 lists dragoman as well as the variants drogman and truchman in English. Consequently, the plural, in English, is "dragomans" (not "dragomen"). The family name of Franjo Tudjman, the first post-Communist President of Croatia, indicates that one of his ancestors might have been a dragoman.
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From Babel to Dragomans: Interpreting the Middle East is a 2004 book written by Middle-East historian Bernard Lewis. The book comprises a series of scholarly essays and speeches given by Lewis over a period of four decades on the topic of the Middle East and the Islamic world.
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As Cyprus and Dulcigno passed in Ottoman control after 1571, they start to appear as diplomats in the embassies of European states in Constantinople. In 1693, a branch of them established itself in Pera. Diplomats from this family were dragomans in French, Polish, Russian, English and Venetian embassies. Antonio Crutta belonged to this branch.
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In Ottoman records, the first imperial dragoman recorded was Lutfi Pasha who was sent to Venice in 1479 to deliver a treaty. The position took particular prominence in the Ottoman Empire, where demand for the mediation provided by dragomans is said to have been created by the resistance on the part of the Muslim Ottomans to learn the languages of non-Muslim nations. The office incorporated diplomatic as well as linguistic duties—namely, in the Porte's relation with Christian countries—and some dragomans thus came to play crucial roles in Ottoman politics. The profession tended to be dominated by ethnic Greeks, including the first Ottoman Dragoman of the Sublime Porte, Panagiotis Nikousios, the official interpreter for the Divan (Imperial Council) of the Sultan, and his successor Alexander Mavrocordatos.
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Demetrios Ypsilantis (also spelt using Dimitrios, Demetrius and/or Ypsilanti; ; ; 1793August 16, 1832) was a member of the prominent Phanariot Greek family Ypsilantis, dragomans of the Ottoman Empire. He served as an officer in the Imperial Russian Army and played an important role in the Greek War of Independence. Ypsilantis was the brother of Alexander Ypsilantis, leader of Filiki Eteria.
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The salary of the Dragoman of the Porte amounted to 47,000 kuruş annually. The success of the post led to the creation of a similar post, that of Dragoman of the Fleet, in 1701. The latter often served as a stepping-stone to the office of Grand Dragoman. There were also junior dragomans, for example for the Ottoman army, or for the Morea Eyalet, but these positions were never formalized in the same manner.
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These men were instrumental in spreading a wide- ranging curiosity about Islamic culture throughout the Latin parts of Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries. The dragomans had scholarly language training in Persian, Arabic and Turkish since they were translators, interpreters, authors and were very open to the material and fashionable intricacies of the Ottoman culture. The first French translation of the Quran was done by André du Ryer, in 1647. He was from the French consulate in Egypt.
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He was in turn succeeded in 1673 by another Greek, Alexander Mavrocordatos. These men began a tradition where almost all subsequent Grand Dragomans of the Porte were of Greek origin or Hellenized as members of a small circle of Phanariote families, such as the Mavrocordatos, Ghica, or Callimachi clans. Many of the Phanariotes had previously served in the staffs of the European embassies in Constantinople. Nikousios, for instance, had previously (and for a time concurrently) served as translator for the Austrian embassy.
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In the Ottoman Empire, the existence of official interpreters or dragomans (from the Italian rendering drog[o]man of Arabic tardjumān, Ottoman terdjümân) is attested from the early 16th century. They were part of the staff of the reis ül-küttab, who was responsible for foreign affairs within the Imperial Council. As few Ottoman Turks ever learned European languages, from early times the majority of these men were of Christian origin—in the main Austrians, Hungarians, Poles, and Greeks. Constantinople In 1661, the Grand Vizier Ahmed Köprülü appointed the Greek Panagiotis Nikousios as Chief Dragoman to the Imperial Council.
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The dragoman also had a staff, which was also paid from impositions on the islands: a deputy (Turkish vekil, Greek βεκίλης), a correspondence secretary, and a messenger. Their role in the administration of the Aegean islands was considerable, as they had the right to apportion taxation, as well as supervise the autonomous local administrations by judging cases themselves or appointing appeal judges. They could impose various fines and penalties, up to the death penalty, which however required the consent of the Kapudan Pasha. Apart from their administrative duties, the dragomans actively promoted education, made donations to churches, codified the customary law of the islands, and intervened in disputes between Orthodox and Catholic islanders.
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House of Muruzi in Saint Petersburg, Russia The Mourouzis () or Moruzi (, Muruzi) are a family which was first mentioned in the Empire of Trebizond. Its origins have been lost, but the two prevalent theories are that they were either a local family originating in a village which has a related name or else one that arrived with the Venetians during the Fourth Crusade (since there are records of a Venetian family with a similar name a generation earlier). They became one of the leading families of Greek Phanariotes. The family moved to present-day Romania (the Danubian Principalities) in the 17th century, became Dragomans of the Porte and boyars, and gave Wallachia and Moldavia two hospodars – Princes Constantine and Alexander.
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Many members of Phanariot families (who had acquired great wealth and influence during the 17th century) occupied high political and administrative posts in the Ottoman Empire. From 1669 until the Greek War of Independence in 1821, Phanariots made up the majority of the dragomans to the Ottoman government (the Porte) and foreign embassies due to the Greeks' higher level of education than the general Ottoman population.Encyclopædia Britannica, The Phanariots, 2008, O.Ed. With the church dignitaries, local notables from the provinces and the large Greek merchant class, Phanariots represented the better-educated members of Greek society during Ottoman rule until the 1821 start of the Greek War of Independence. During the war, Phanariots influenced decisions by the Greek National Assembly (the representative body of Greek revolutionaries, which met six times between 1821 and 1829).
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In Constantinople, on Easter Sunday, the Patriarch of the Greek Orthodox Church, Gregory V, was publicly hanged despite the fact that he had condemned the revolution and preached obedience to the Sultan in his sermons.Brewer, David The Greek War of Independence, London: Overlook Duckworth, 2011 pages 105. Since the revolution began in March, the Sublime Porte had executed at random various prominent Greeks living in Constantinople, such as the serving Dragoman of the Porte and two retired dragomans, a number of wealthy bankers and merchants, including a member of the ultra-rich Mavrocordatos family, three monks and a priest of the Orthodox church, and three ordinary Greeks accused of planning to poison the city's water supply.Brewer, David The Greek War of Independence, London: Overlook Duckworth, 2011 pages 104.
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The École des Jeunes de langues was a language school founded by Jean-Baptiste Colbert in 1669 to train interpreters and translators (then called dragomans after the Ottoman and Arabic word for such a figure, like Covielle in Le Bourgeois gentilhomme) in the languages of the Levant (Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Armenian, etc.) for ancien regime France. It systematized such training activity, which had begun informally at the Collège des trois langues; the latter had been created in 1530 by Francis I of France on the initiative of Henry IV's widow, Marie de Medici, to offer a course in Arabic. The training of the students (jeunes de langues) was done partly in Constantinople and partly in Paris. They were often the sons of French diplomats or merchants already operating in the Ottoman Empire or the Christian areas of the east.
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Photo of Leone Caetani taken in Egypt in 1888 Leone Caetani (September 12, 1869 – December 25, 1935), Duke of Sermoneta (also known as Prince Caetani), was an Italian scholar, politician and historian of the Middle East. Caetani is considered a pioneer and founding father in the application of the historical method on the sources of the early Islamic traditions which he subjected to minute historical and psychological analysis.From Babel to the dragomans Bernard Lewis Then came a second phase, when the great nineteenth- century scholars began to apply critical method, treating Muslim historians in the same way they had treated Greek, Latin, and their own historians, trying to detect biases, distortions, variant versions and so on. Here I am thinking particularly of the work of such founding fathers of our discipline as de Goeje, Wellhausen, Caetani and others.
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All dragomans had to be proficient in the "three languages" (elsine-i selase) of Arabic, Persian, and Turkish that were commonly used in the empire, as well as a number of foreign languages (usually French and Italian), but the responsibilities of Dragoman of the Porte went beyond that of a mere interpreter, and were rather those of a minister in charge of the day-to-day conduct of foreign affairs. As such the post was the highest public office available to non-Muslims in the Ottoman Empire. Nikousios and his successors managed to attach to their office a number of great privileges, such as tax exemption for themselves, their sons, and 20 members of their retinue; exemption from all customs fees for items destined for their personal use; immunity from all courts except from that of the Grand Vizier; permission to dress in the same kaftans as the Ottoman officials, and use ermine fur; or the permission to ride a horse. These made the position highly coveted, and the object of the Phanariotes' aspirations and rivalries.
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