The article deals with maps and images of the earth's surface of medieval Arab geographers in the philological aspect. Special attention is paid to translating map symbols into Russian. The author points out the importance of taking into account the semantic and stylistic features of medieval geographical terms.

Keywords: Arabic cartography, geographical terms, translation issues, classical Arabic, Medieval geography.

As you know, geography and cartography in the Arab Caliphate went hand in hand with the development of navigation, travel, and new conquests among the medieval Arabs.

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land, as well as with the development of historical science in them. The geographical literature of the Arabs is described in detail by I. Y. Krachkovsky, while the history of Arab navigation was studied for many years by his student T. A. Shumovsky. The scientific information accumulated by these outstanding representatives of the Russian school of Oriental studies is extensive. However, with the advent of new materials and previously unexplored sources, the study of this area of the multi-faceted culture of the Caliphate is once again gaining relevance.

In our opinion, cartography is particularly interesting. Maps of the first Arab geographers al-Istakhri (X century), al-Balkhi (X century), al-Sharif al-Idrisi (XII century), collected in the book "Atlas of the History of Islam" by the Egyptian author Hussein Munis, can become the object of general philological research. This article is an attempt to make some observations on the vocabulary of these maps, mainly from the point of view of the peculiarities of its translation into Russian.

It is known that the Arabs reached the island of Ceylon and the coast of China as early as the fifth century, before the advent of Islam. However, the formation of geographical science itself in the Caliphate dates back to the IX century. There is an opinion that the Arabs adopted the art of mapping from the Greeks, and Arab geography owes much to the works of Ptolemy. According to the author of the Atlas of the History of Islam, Hussein Munis, Arabic cartography is unique, and most maps were compiled not from Greek models, but from the direct experience of travelers [Mu'nis, 1987, p. 24]. Geographical science among the Arabs is usually divided into two branches - astronomical and descriptive. The latter includes works of the Al-Masālik wa-l-Mamālik series and other travel stories, travel notes, so-called richlya, etc. Descriptive geography is more typical for Arabic literature, as I. Y. Krachkovsky wrote (Krachkovsky, 1957, pp. 16-17).

Maps of medieval Arabic compilers have no analogues. Hussein Munis believes that Arabic geographical books almost always contained cartographic material, and it was considered paramount in relation to the text. Often books began with an image of the Earth, which served as the basis of the work. This is confirmed by the largest work of the famous historian and geographer of the tenth century, Abu'l-Qasim Ibn Haukal , i.e. "Image of the Earth", in which the text served only as a commentary on maps.

The Arabs of the Middle Ages knew four types of geographical maps:

1) Maps - conditional images intended only to illustrate certain comparisons by the author of the book. For example, if the author said that the Earth is like a bird with its head in the West (in the Maghreb and Andalusia) and its tail in the East, then the book would contain an image of such a bird that vaguely resembles a map.

2) Astronomical geographical maps adopted from the Greeks. Distances and scales on them were calculated by the location of stars and celestial bodies. Among the Arab scholars, such maps were compiled by al-Khwarizmi, Suhrab, al-Battani and al-Biruni, i.e. mathematicians and encyclopedic scientists, because such maps required accurate calculations and deep knowledge of astronomy.

3) Finally, the third type of maps the Arabs themselves call It and there are maps of geographers-descriptors, followers of the original Arabic branch of the science of the earth's surface. Even though their maps are often inaccurate, and they often do not observe distances, scales, and locations of geographical features relative to each other, their key advantage is that they are completely original and unique, inherent only in the Arab culture.

In a separate, fourth category, Hussein Munis highlights the maps of the famous geographer and historian al-Sharif al-Idrisi (1100 - 1165), contained in his famous book ("Entertainment of the exhausted on a journey through the regions") [Mu'nis, 1987, p. 26]. Al-Idrisi made one of the first attempts to create an image of the Earth and the starry sky in the form of a ball-planisphere, pasting the drawn pieces of the map on a silver ball. On this peculiar "globe" there were also

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meridians and parallels are plotted. Maps of al-Idrisi are considered the most accurate of all those compiled before Modern times.

Other major medieval geographers whose maps have served as material for this article are Abu Zayd al-Balkhi (X century) and his follower Abu'l-Qasim al-Istahri (X century), al-Biruni (X century), the Samanid vizier Abu Abdallah al-Jeyhani (X century), and al-Qasim al-Istahri (X century).-Qazwini (XIII century), al-Mastufi (XIV century), al-Safaqi (XVI century), as well as an unknown geographer of the X century, whose map is also included in the Atlas of the History of Islam.

The key problem considered in this article is the question of translating symbols on medieval maps into Russian. In modern geographical science, there are certain standards for compliance with multilingual terminology: - it is always "sea", - "ocean", ra's - "cape". However, when a translator deals with medieval cartography, everything is much more complicated, since the designations of different authors differ from each other, not to mention the fact that the vocabulary of medieval maps is very different from modern ones. Most of the differences, however, lie in the semantic sphere, i.e. the phonetic appearance of geographical terms has not changed, but over the centuries, due to the standardization and unification of terms, their signified has changed. This is the first important feature to consider when translating medieval Arabic-language geographical literature into Russian. Another aspect that the translator should keep in mind is stylistic. It is important to observe the stylistic framework of the era under consideration, avoid neologisms, in order to achieve maximum adequacy of the translation.

Let's turn to the lexical units, which, in my opinion, are particularly difficult: the very phrase that the Arabs called their maps in the Middle Ages, it is hardly advisable to translate the word "map". Although in Muniz's atlas the works of Arab cartographers are already designated by the word in the comments to them, he notes that this word got into the Arabic language through French (from the French. carte) later, and in the Middle Ages the Arabs used the terms ("drawing, picture, image"), rasm ("drawing"), ar-rasm ("drawing board"). Al-Idrisi called his cards ("painted board"). However, the maps of al-Balkhi or al-Istakhri cannot be called maps in the modern sense of the word. These are, indeed, rather conventional, schematic images of a part of the earth's surface - most of them have either the shape of a circle or some irregular geometric shape. Seas and lakes are marked with smooth circles, and rivers are marked with straight lines. Therefore, the most appropriate translation of the term or rasm into Russian, as it seems to me, is "picture of the Earth".

The names of water bodies are interesting. The most common of the terms in this series is (in the modern sense - "sea"). However, this word meant not only the seas as such (i.e., not only large salt reservoirs that have access to the world's oceans), but also bays, lakes, coastal waters, and even rivers. Thus, the traveler Buzurg ibn Shakhriyar in his work "Wonders of India" repeatedly calls the Nile "fresh sea" (Ibn Shakhriyar, 1959, p. 51). Here, obviously, the consciousness of the Jahili (pre-Islamic) nomadic Arabs, who perceived water bodies as an unknown sea element, as a sign of danger, violent manifestations of nature, played a role. Obviously, this is also indicated by the etymology of the word . The verb in Arabic means " to be amazed, to be afraid."

The designations of "seas-lakes", such as the Aral Sea or the Caspian Sea, are also very contradictory. On many maps, the Aral Sea is designated as ("Khorezm Sea"). But on one of the images of the Land of the famous geographer and historian Al-Istakhri there is a designation (i.e. "Khorezm Lake") [Mu'nis, 1987, p. 12]. Obviously, it means the same Aral Sea, with the only difference that Al-Istakhri considers it a lake. But, if you look closely , this is just a diminutive form of the word, i.e. a big difference between the sea and

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a lake for medieval Arabs, apparently, did not yet exist. Hence the common designation of the Caspian Sea on medieval maps - the largest lake in the world-has remained "sea"in most languages of the world.

Word ("bay") it is extremely rare. In fact, from the maps given in the Atlas of Islamic History, this term is found only on the map of al-Balkhi for the modern Persian Gulf: al - ' Arabiyy. Interestingly, al-Balkhi has two reservoirs with this name on the map. Given that in most cases modern bays are again referred to by the word "sea", perhaps in the literature of the Middle Ages it is more appropriate to translate as" bay "or"harbor". In this case, it will also be stylistically more consistent with the language of this era.

The word in the modern language denoting the ocean, in that era had a slightly different meaning. On many maps, or "pictures of the earth", of the tenth century - for example, at al-Jeyhani or al-Balkhi-you can find the inscription i.e. "surrounding, encircling the sea", which corresponds to medieval ideas about a ring of water around the lands known to the Arabs. In other words, they meant those open seas where Arab ships had not yet sailed. The word subsequently disappears from the phrase, and it is shortened to, and this term is not understood as the ocean in the modern sense (for example, the Indian Ocean is called by Arab cartographers, but those very unknown expanses of water, the very "ring sea". The Greek word ωκεανóς may have already been known to the Arabs from the writings of Ptolemy, but instead they actually had their own concept. When translated as "ocean" in the context of medieval literature, the originality of this concept is lost. Therefore, we offer the options "Outer Sea", "Great Sea" or "Surrounding Sea". The latter variant is used by T. A. Shumovsky in his book "The Arabs and the Sea" (Shumovsky, 1964, pp. 146-147). We are inclined to agree with him in his proposed translation of phrases like al-Hind or Bilad as "Sea of Indians" and" Country of Chinese", respectively, since this is both stylistically and lexically most consistent with the language of medieval Arabic geographical works.

There is also some confusion about the words diyār, bilād, and balad in the cartographic materials under consideration. They are almost completely interchangeable and can denote either a country in the singular (for example, Bilad - "the country of the Chinese" in al-Istakhri [Mu'nis, 1987, p. 12]), or countries in the plural (Bilad - "the countries of the Maghreb", Diyar al-Kafr - "the countries of the infidels"). in al-Jeyhani [Mu'nis, 1987, p. 21]. In such a situation, the translator needs to have background knowledge and study the context; and it should be translated in some cases as "country", in others - as" countries", depending on the historical facts of the existence or absence of a single state. It is only necessary to refrain from the obvious translation of "land" in view of the fact that there is a word Clearer situation when we see the term wilāyah (as in one of the paintings of the Land of al-Jeyhani) - "state" - in combinations of Wilāyat ("state").The state of the Chinese"), Wilāyat ("The State of the Russians").

The cardinal directions of almost all cartographers are marked the same way-aş-şamāl ("north"), ("south"), ("west") and al-masriq ("east"). The last two words do not function as terms in modern geography - instead they are cognates and şarq, respectively. But we also meet şarq in some medieval pictures of the Earth. It seems to us that there is still a difference in connotation between and between şarq and masriq. With the letter mim as a prefix, these words become the name of the place and time of action in their grammatical form and acquire the corresponding semantic connotation. In addition, in this form, they sound stylistically

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closer to the Middle Ages. Hence the translation options we offer: masriq - "sunrise side", - "sunset side".

In addition to the actual terms, i.e. common names, even richer, inexhaustible material is provided by medieval toponyms and the possibility of their translation into other languages. But this is a topic for other research.

list of literature

Mu'nis H. Atlas Tarih al - ' Islam (Atlas of the History of Islam). Al-Qahirah (Cairo), 1987.

Ibn Shakhriyar B. Chudesa Indii [Miracles of India] / Translated from the Arabic by R. L. Ehrlich; edited by I. Y. Krachkovsky.

Krachkovsky I. Y. Izbrannye sochineniya [Selected works]. 4. Arab Geographical Literature, Moscow: Publishing House of the USSR Academy of Sciences, 1957.

Shumovsky T. A. Arabs and the Sea, Moscow: Nauka Publ., 1964.

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