He began his educational and working biography as a student at the Mining Institute in Moscow, and then as a miner at the Irmino 4/2 bis mine in the Donbass. At that time, Alexey Stakhanov worked at the neighboring mine "Central-Irmino". Working in the mine, he never stopped dreaming about Arabic studies. Having written a letter to academician Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr, he learned about (LILI, then LIFLI) in Leningrad (the predecessor of the Eastern Faculty of Leningrad University) and in 1932 became his student.
Teodor Shumovsky was involved in the same case with Lev Gumilyov and Nikolai Yerekhovich. These three students of Leningrad University were credited with leading the youth wing of the mythical Progressive Party and were accused of various anti-Soviet activities.
After the intervention of lawyers hired by Anna Akhmatova, Lev Gumilyov's mother, and Vrienna Yerekhovich, Nikolai Yerekhovich's sister, the original sentence was overturned. Despite this, all three defendants were sent to camps to serve their sentences. Shumovsky and Gumilyov were initially exiled to Vorkuta, and then, after reinvestigation, to various camps. Nikolai Yerekhovich was sent to Kolyma, where he died in 1946.
The immediate reason for the conclusion of T. A. Shumovsky could be a public speech in defense of his teacher, Academician I. Yu. Krachkovsky (1883-1951). Shumovsky openly expressed his negative attitude towards Klimovich's article, in which he accused the academician of "obsequiousness before the West." According to Shumovsky's memoirs, he was also presented with written testimony of the later famous Assyriologist and Semitologist I. M. Dyakonov, who described Shumovsky as "insane". Shumovsky was also blamed for hiding his Polish origin.
During his imprisonment, Shumovsky participated in the creation of a prison university in a transit prison (located behind the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg) under the leadership of academic soil scientist B. B. Polynov, also a prisoner. In prisons and camps, T. A. Shumovsky, in parallel with the work of a prisoner, intensively continued his creative activity through writing and translating poems (from memory), as well as learning languages from representatives of various nationalities. These classes supplemented the classical oriental education received by Shumovsky at the university and laid the foundation for his views on both historical processes and linguistics, which differ from those accepted in traditional science.
Despite the end of his term in 1944, T. A. Shumovsky was left in exile until the end of the war. Since 1945 he has been married to Taisiya Ivanovna Budylina (1918-1971) Son Iosif Teodorovich Budylin (Shumovsky) b. 1945. Culturologist, author of books on Pushkin studies, museum problems. Academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. Second marriage with Galina Iosifovna Sumchinskaya. Son Vladislav Teodorovich, orientalist. Candidate of Economic Sciences.
Shumovsky was released from the camp to a settlement in the period from 1946 to 1948. At this time, he worked at the Novgorod Institute for the Improvement of Teachers, was able to graduate from Leningrad University in parallel and defend PhD thesis on the theme "Three unknown directions of Ahmad ibn Majid".
Shumovsky spent the second conclusion in Ozerlag (Krasnoyarsk Territory). Ozerlag prisoners were required to have numbers. Shumovsky had the number A-499.
Shumovsky continued scientific and literary activity and after leaving the institute. He completed his work on Arab navigation: he prepared and published a critical edition of the Arab Naval Encyclopedia (1984-1985), as well as popular science books “In the footsteps of Sinbad the Sailor. Oceanic Arabia" (1986) and "The Last Lion of the Arabian Seas" (1999). He also articulated his views on the linguistic process in Oroxology (2002). His most meaningful work of this period was the first poetic translation of the Koran in Russia (7 editions in the period 1992-2011)
AT last years Teodor Shumovsky worked on an anthology of his poetic translations.
Restoration of the historical role of the Arabs as a great maritime nation of the Middle AgesFor Shumovsky, philology is the first and main source of restoration of historical truth, especially in the field of ethnogenesis. From his point of view, manuscripts and other historical documents are extremely subjective, subject to interpretation by those who write them. Language data, on the other hand, cannot be falsified. Thus, the study of the mutual influence of languages \u200b\u200bsays more about the origin of peoples than historical annals. In the views of Shumovsky, the influence of Acad. N. Ya. Marra, more philosophical than factual. Shumovsky, like Marr, considers language to be the basis of thinking, the basis of history, the basis of understanding history, and in this he opposes L. N. Gumilyov, who took his fundamental concepts, such as "ethnos", beyond the categories of language.
In his studies on ethnogenesis, Shumovsky set himself the task of looking at the West through the eyes of the East, casting doubt on the Eurocentric interpretations that have become customary, primarily in relation to the history of Russia. Is Russia West or East? Historical sources on the history of Russia are widely known, but Shumovsky was primarily interested in the data of the Russian language as "an impassive witness and participant in history." Shumovsky argues that Russia is the world's largest and most versatile area of interaction between East and West.
From Shumovsky's point of view, many words of the Russian language, which are traditionally considered purely Russian, are, if not exclusively, then mostly of Turkic, Persian, Arabic, Armenian, even Hittite origin:
“For Russian speech, the earliest word-forming layers are two eastern ones: Turkic and Iranian. Traditional linguistics considers the Turkic influence as a phenomenon to a large extent later - at the time of the Tatar-Mongol yoke, and the Iranian one as exceptionally early, relating to the Indo-European progenitor - "substratum", like other European languages. However, the analysis of the dictionary of the Russian language leads to opposite conclusions. The influence of the first - Turkic - should not be entirely attributed to the time of the Tatar invasion, then it could take place only in exceptional cases, because religious opposition prevented constant borrowing; in contrast to this, the spiritual state of pre-Christian Russia opened up wide scope for Turkic-Russian communication. As for the Iranian layer, it is precisely its impact on the Russian language (sometimes through the Armenian and Turkic languages) that is what is usually denoted by the vague and inaccurate term "Indo-European" took place much later than is commonly believed.
It is paradoxical that Shumovsky and Gumilyov came to similar conclusions in the field of the ethnogenesis of Russia, despite the fact that their starting points, their methods of analysis, were diametrically opposed.
In the absence of rigorous scientific criticism, both Gumilyov and Shumovsky were systematically harassed by academic circles, especially in the 1970s and 80s, and both suffered from a lack of meaningful scientific dialogue. Both of them, although surrounded by followers, worked in isolation. This was their tragedy - like that of many other representatives of Soviet science.
In the prefaces to his translations, Shumovsky emphasizes that "a literal translation is not an exact translation", defending the postulate of the artistry of a translation as a necessary condition for its adequacy. He believes that the:
“A side effect of formalization in modern science has been the desire for the accuracy of translation, in the sense of its literalism. Many modern scholars sincerely believe that the more “accurate” they translate a certain word or grammatical structure, the more “adequate” our understanding will be ... Substituting words according to a dictionary ignores the relativity that we inevitably encounter in translation. The only possible approach should be based on the translation of the content, and not the historically determined form, which creates only the illusion of accuracy. This does not mean that the translator can endlessly deviate from the grammar of the text. Detailed critical analysis is the basis of translation. But a scholar-translator should not pass off grammar as content. An adequate translation is always a literary translation, the result of logical constructions and artistic inspiration. By itself, scientific analysis destroys the integrity of the source material ... the translated work is not reduced to an automatic sum of grammatical forms and historical facts.
Before Shumovsky, two translations of the Koran were recognized in Russia - G. S. Sablukov (teacher of the Saratov Theological Academy, teacher of Chernyshevsky) and academician I. Yu. Krachkovsky, the founder of the Soviet school of Arabic studies. Both translations were prose. Shumovsky was a student of Krachkovsky and largely relied on his approach to the scientific interpretation of the text. At the same time, Shumovsky points out a significant number of incorrect translations and editorial inaccuracies in the edition of Krachkovsky's translation: the edition was carried out after the death of the academician and was not prepared by him for publication.
The peculiarity of Shumovsky's translation is that it combines the scientific analysis of the text, in accordance with the classical Oriental tradition, but at the same time preserves the traditional interpretations accepted in the Muslim environment. In addition, Shumovsky's translation is made in a poetic form, since, in his opinion, it is the poetic translation that most adequately conveys the Arabic original, presented in the form of rhymed prose. Shumovsky's translation went through five editions (1992-2008).
In 2009, the Pokidyshev and Sons publishing house released the first audio version of the poetic translation of the Koran, which received the blessing of the Chairman of the Council of Muftis of Russia, Mufti Sheikh Ravil Gainutdin. For this recording, the poetic translation of the Qur'an was read by artist Alexander Klyukvin; also several suras in the audiobook were read by T. A. Shumovsky himself.
Birthday February 02, 1913
linguist-orientalist, arabist, candidate of philology and doctor of historical sciences
Biography
A family
Born into a Polish family in Zhytomyr, Volyn province, on February 2, 1913. Shumovsky's mother, Amalia Fominichna Kaminskaya, was a pianist, and her father, Adam Vikentyevich Shumovsky, was a bank employee. Shumovsky's elder brother, Stanislav Antonovich (Adamovich) Shumovsky, became one of the founders of the Soviet aircraft industry. A significant place in the biography of the scientist was occupied by the second oldest brother Joseph.
He spent his childhood and youth in Shamakhi (Azerbaijan), the ancient capital of the Shirvan kingdom, where his family moved during the First World War. Walks in the surrounding mosques and Muslim cemeteries, where there were many inscriptions in Arabic, aroused interest in Arabic studies.
He began his educational and working biography as a student at the Mining Institute in Moscow, and then as a miner at the Irmino 4/2 bis mine in the Donbass. At that time, Alexey Stakhanov worked at the neighboring mine "Central-Irmino". Working in the mine, he never stopped dreaming about Arabic studies. Having written a letter to academician Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr, he learned about the Historical and Linguistic Institute in Leningrad (the predecessor of the Oriental Faculty of Leningrad University) and in 1932 became his student.
Student years at Leningrad University
At the Oriental Faculty, Shumovsky specialized in Arabic philology and the history of the Middle East. His mentors were Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences N. V. Yushmanov, Academician V. V. Struve and the head of Soviet Arabic Studies, Academician I. Yu. Shumovsky's life's work.
While still a fifth-year student (1938), he began work on the translation of Ahmad ibn Majid's "Three Unknown Pilots", but was able to continue his research only in 1948 (between the first and second conclusions) and finally complete it only in 1956 - after the final release from Gulag.
Gulag and exile
Teodor Shumovsky was involved in the same case with Lev Gumilyov and Nikolai Yerekhovich. These three students of Leningrad University were credited with leading the youth wing of the mythical Progressive Party and were accused of various anti-Soviet activities.
After the intervention of lawyers hired by Anna Akhmatova, Lev Gumilyov's mother, and Vrienna Yerekhovich, Nikolai Yerekhovich's sister, the original sentence was overturned. Despite this, all three defendants were sent to camps to serve their sentences. Shumovsky and Gumilyov were initially exiled to Vorkuta, and then, after reinvestigation, to various camps. Nikolai Yerekhovich was sent to Kolyma, where he died in 1946.
The immediate reason for the conclusion of T. A. Shumovsky could be a public speech in defense of his teacher, Academician I. Yu. Krachkovsky. Shumovsky openly expressed his negative attitude towards Klimovich's article, in which he accused the academician of "groveling before the West." According to Shumovsky's memoirs, he was also presented with written testimony of the later famous Assyriologist and Semitologist I. M. Dyakonov, who described Shumovsky as "insane". Shumovsky was also blamed for concealing his Polish origin.
Teodor Adamovich Shumovsky(born February 2, 1913, Zhitomir) - Russian linguist-orientalist, Arabist, candidate of philology and doctor of historical sciences. The author of the first poetic translation of the Koran into Russian, the oldest prisoner of the St. Petersburg prison "Crosses", the sharemaker of Lev Nikolaevich Gumilyov.
Biography
A family
Born into a Polish family in Ukraine (in the city of Zhytomyr). Shumovsky's mother, Amalia Fominskaya, was a pianist, and her father, Adam Shumovsky, was a bank employee. Shumovsky's elder brother, Stanislav Antonovich (Adamovich), became one of the founders of the Soviet aircraft industry.
He spent his childhood and youth in Shamakhi (Azerbaijan), the ancient capital of the Shirvan kingdom, where his family moved during the First World War. Walks in the surrounding mosques and Muslim cemeteries, where there were many inscriptions in Arabic, aroused interest in Arabic studies.
He began his educational and working biography as a student at the Mining Institute in Moscow, and then as a miner at the Irmino 4/2 bis mine in the Donbass. At that time, Aleksey Stakhanov worked at the neighboring Tsentralnaya-Irmino mine. Working in the mine, he never stopped dreaming about Arabic studies. Having written a letter to academician Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr, he learned about the Historical and Linguistic Institute in Leningrad (the predecessor of the Oriental Faculty of Leningrad University and in 1932 became his student.
Years at Leningrad University
At the Oriental Faculty, Shumovsky specialized in Arabic philology and the history of the Middle East. His mentors were Corr. Academy of Sciences of the USSR N.V. Yushmanov, acad. V.V. Struve and the head of the Soviet Arabic studies, acad. I.Yu. Krachkovsky, who introduced him to the manuscripts of Ahmad ibn Majid, the Arab pilot Vasco da Gama, the study of which became the work of Shumovsky's life.
While still a fifth-year student (1938), he began work on the translation of “Three Unknown Pilots” by Ahmad ibn Majid, but was able to continue his research only in 1948 (between the first and second conclusions) and finally complete it only in 1956 - after the final release from GULAG.
Gulag and exile
First conclusion (1938-1946)
Teodor Shumovsky was involved in the same case with Lev Gumilyov and Nikolai Yerekhovich. These three students of Leningrad University were credited with the leadership of the youth wing of the mythical Progressive Party and various anti-Soviet activities were put in mind.
After the intervention of lawyers hired by Anna Akhmatova, Lev Gumilyov's mother, and Vrienna Yerekhovich, Nikolai Yerekhovich's sister, the original sentence was overturned. Despite this, all three defendants were sent to camps to serve their sentences. Shumovsky and Gumilyov were initially sent to Vorkuta, and then, after reinvestigation, to various camps. Nikolai Yerekhovich was sent to Kolyma, where he died in 1945.
The immediate reason for Shumovsky's imprisonment could be his public speech in defense of his teacher, Acad. I.Yu.Krachkovsky. Shumovsky openly expressed his negative attitude towards Klimovich's article, in which he accused the academician of "groveling before the West." According to Shumovsky's memoirs, he was also presented with written testimony from the later famous Assyriologist I.M. Dyakonov, who described Shumovsky as "insane". Shumovsky was also blamed for concealing his Polish origin.
During his imprisonment, Shumovsky participated in the creation of a prison university in the Transit Prison (located behind the Alexander Nevsky Lavra in St. Petersburg) under the guidance of academician-soil scientist B.B. Polynov, also a prisoner. In prisons and camps, Shumovsky, in parallel with the work of a prisoner, intensively continued his creative activity through writing and translating poems (from memory), as well as learning languages from representatives of various nationalities. These classes complemented the classical oriental education Shumovsky received at the university and laid the foundation for his views on both historical processes and linguistics, which differ from those accepted in traditional science.
Despite the end of his term in 1944, Shumovsky was left in the camp until the end of the war.
Link in Borovichi(1946-1948)
Shumovsky was released from the camp to settle in the period from 1946 to 1948. At that time he worked at the Novgorod Institute for the Improvement of Teachers, was able to simultaneously graduate from Leningrad University and defend his Ph.D.
Second conclusion (1948-1956)
Shumovsky spent the second conclusion in Ozerlag (Krasnoyarsk Territory). In the post-war Gulag, prisoners were already deprived of names - they were given numbers. Shumovsky had the number A-499.
In 1948, Shumovsky sent a letter to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR with a request to provide an opportunity to complete work on the Arabic directions and thereby "develop a new field in Soviet oriental studies" in exchange for a life sentence. The appeal was left unanswered. In the early 1950s, in despair that he would ever be released, Shumovsky began studying medicine with the aim of becoming a paramedic and working in remote villages. In 1956, he was nevertheless released.
Shumovsky received full rehabilitation on his both conclusions in 1963, having written 110 applications to various courts.
Work at the Academy of Sciences (1956-1979)
(Leningrad Branch of the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Academy of Sciences)
Thanks to the personal support of Academician I.A. Orbeli and N.V. Pigulevskaya, Shumovsky was able to work at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Leningrad branch). Shumovsky's academic activity at the Institute began with the publication of Three Unknown Pilots, which were subsequently translated into Portuguese and Arabic. In 1965, Shumovsky defended his doctoral dissertation on the theme "Arabic Naval Encyclopedia of the 15th century", based on the study and translation of the most important work of Ahmad ibn Majid "The Book of Benefits on the Fundamentals and Rules of Marine Science". This work caused great scientific controversy, which complicated the position of Shumovsky in the Academy of Sciences. Other significant complications occurred as a result of the publication of the books By the Sea of Arabic Studies (1975) and Memoirs of an Arabist (1978), in which Shumovsky presented an alternative view of the development of Arabic studies in the USSR.
1979 - present
Upon retirement, Shumovsky completed his work on Arab navigation. He prepared and published a critical edition of the Arab Naval Encyclopedia (1986), as well as popular science books In the Footsteps of Sinbad the Sailor. Oceanic Arabia" (1986) and "The Last Lion of the Arabian Seas" (1999). He also articulated his views on the linguistic process in Oroxology (2002). His most significant work of this period was the first poetic translation of the Koran in Russia (5 editions in the period 1992-2008)
Shumovsky is currently working on an anthology of his poetic translations.
Teodor Adamovich Shumovsky
Arabs and the Sea: Through the Pages of Manuscripts and Books
Theodor Shumovsky
ARABS AND THE SEA!
AFTER OLD MANUSCRIPTS AND BOOKS
Second corrected edition
Marjani Publishing House
On the craft of a historian in verse and prose
The book that the reader now holds in his hands is rather unusual. It was written almost half a century ago by the Russian Arabist Teodor Adamovich Shumovsky in "hot pursuit" of the unique Arabic sailing directions of the Indian and Pacific Oceans of the 15th - early 16th centuries, which he then studied, translated and printed. The theme of the book is unusual. Arab navigation of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the New Age, as an area of historical geography, still belongs to the rare areas of Oriental studies. Practicing it requires not only a thorough knowledge of special humanitarian disciplines, but also the ability to understand other more exact and natural sciences, including a very specific medieval Arabic maritime vocabulary. Only a few people have worked and are working in this area, although some of them have earned recognition and respect among orientalists. In the twentieth century the French orientalist Gabriel Ferrand, the Russian Arabist Ignaty Yulianovich Krachkovsky, known to the general public for his translation of the Koran, as well as his student Shumovsky, the oldest living Arabist in Russia, turned to her. The last of them, the author of this book, remains today almost the only Russian specialist in this field.
Unusual is not only the subject, but the approach and style of this work. The Arabists of the classical school, to which the author of the book belongs, are accustomed to limiting themselves to the study of the text, the work with which completely absorbs their attention. The historical context, the epoch and the people who wrote, rewrote and read the works they studied, as a rule, are not of interest to most classics. In his specialty, T.A. Shumovsky is a textual source critic. At the beginning of his scientific career, he also moved along this general path. He translated and commented on the works of the pilot Vasco da Gama Ahmad ibn Majid and his younger contemporary Sulaiman al-Makhri. As early as 1948, at the Leningrad Institute of Oriental Studies, he defended his Ph.D. thesis on the work of Ibn Majid, based on a manuscript of his works from the Institute's Manuscript Fund. Shumovsky entered the history of Russian oriental studies by publishing in 1957 three poetic sailing directions by Ahmad ibn Majid, followed in 1985 and 1986 by two plump volumes with a critical edition of the Arabic text and a Russian translation of the Book of Uses on the Fundamentals and Rules of Marine Science. In 1975, Shumovsky prepared for publication an annotated translation of Sulaiman al-Mahri's "Makhri support for the lasting acquisition of maritime knowledge". For a number of reasons, the publication of the book was delayed by more than a quarter of a century, and only in 2009 did it get to the publishing house. Finally, the topic of Shumovsky's doctoral dissertation, defended back in 1957, was the history of Arabic maritime geography.
The title of this dissertation was the same as that of the book, the first edition of which was published in Moscow in 1964 - "The Arabs and the Sea". Needless to say: it is said simply, strongly and in some ways defiantly, because the Arabs are associated by the Russian and European readers not with the sea, but with land, primarily with the waterless deserts of the Middle East and North Africa. On the significance of the sea in the history of formation Arab culture, society and statehood the reader will learn from the pages of this book. One of its main conclusions is the recognition of Europe's long-standing ties with the Muslim East. The era of the great geographical discoveries was based on the achievements of medieval Arab geographers and navigators. Long before the European advance to the East, they mastered the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean with part of the Pacific. The example of Ibn Majid shows that the Arab pilots also participated in the sea expeditions of the European pioneers. It is interesting that Western medievalists came to similar conclusions, preferring to talk about Europe's close contacts with the "Islamic world" since the time of the Crusades. The image of the Arabs as "wild sons of the desert" created by the Orientalists of the colonial era is almost completely rejected today.
But the reader will read more about this in Shumovsky himself. I want to point out something else. In contrast to the dissertation and publications of Arabic sailing directions, in which the main place is occupied by the texts of sources, in a small book of 1964, which is now being reprinted, it is not only and not so much about manuscripts and the historical circumstances of their appearance, but about the work of a historian dealing with manuscripts. For this reason, the book turned out to be largely autobiographical. Together with the author, we are transported half a century, if not more, back and go through step by step the detective story of the discovery of unique Arabic sailing directions, and even in verse, in the funds of the former Asian Museum and the Institute of Oriental Studies, and now the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts in St. Petersburg , the gradual deciphering of the manuscript since the early 1930s, when the author of this book was still a student. In the best traditions of the Arabic literary tradition, which teaches to honor the predecessors and even created a special genre of commentary and supracommentary (sharh and hashia), Shumovsky's book in some ways serves as a continuation of the collection of essays by his teacher Academician Krachkovsky "Over Arabic Manuscripts", which was repeatedly reprinted. No wonder its first part deliberately paraphrases its name.
Writing about the profession of a historian is a thankless task. Despite the presence of well-known and recognized examples (for example, the book of the French medievalist Mark Blok “Apology of History”), historians themselves came to the idea of the possibility, if not the need, to describe the work of the researcher only recently. For a long time it was believed that one should not introduce the reader into his "kitchen", limiting himself to the front facade of scientific monographs. The nineteenth, and even the recently past twentieth century, were generally too dismissive of the life and work of an individual. Excessive fascination with global theoretical schemes common not only for Oriental studies, but also for the humanities in general of the past era, in many respects impoverished even the most successful scientific research, the armchair creators of which tried to present the reader not with an individual, but with the masses, but in reality, as a rule, they did not could show neither an individual, nor even the masses. Today, the rule of good form, at least in Western science, has become, on the contrary, to deny such essentialism in approaches and to laugh at the naive, and often sanctimonious statements of historians of the 19th-20th centuries. about striving for the greatest objectivity of presentation. But it is one thing to declare one's intentions, and another to want and be able to fulfill them.
It is not given to everyone to captivate the reader with a story about old manuscripts that are incomprehensible to a non-specialist and the concerns of a historian. You can't say the same about the author of this book. He knows how not only to do the work of a historian with high quality, but to describe it vividly and fascinatingly. Academic science has so far thought too little about the form of presentation and transmission of source texts. As is known, poetry played an important role in the Arab-Muslim literary and scientific tradition. The most diverse authors from the time of the emergence of Islam and even earlier often expressed their thoughts in verse. At the same time, in terms of content, they could relate to the most diverse areas of knowledge - from history and geography to politics and law. The Arabic directions, on which Shumovsky worked, were also partly set out in verse. So, while working on Arabic manuscripts, he came to the idea of the need to convey their form by the artistic means of the Russian language, so as not to deprive the Russian-speaking reader of the opportunity to experience the same feelings that arise in an Arab when reading the original. In his books, Shumovsky expressed his own principles of literary translation, not accepting the slavish adherence to the grammatical structure of the original. Shumovsky was not alone in this. The search for more adequate means of literary translation worried the largest representatives of Russian Oriental studies of the 20th century, such as the famous Sinologist and translator Vasily Mikhailovich Alekseev or Igor Mikhailovich Dyakonov, a specialist in the literature of the ancient Near East.
The classical Arab-Muslim scholarly and literary tradition is largely based on quoting and commenting on predecessors. Much in the writings on Arabic maritime geography is sometimes impossible to understand without referring not only to the history of medieval navigation, but also to a wider layer of culture of that time. His commentary on the reading of the Arabic directions of the XII-XVI centuries. also gives the author of Arabs and the Sea. The second chapter of the book includes fascinating digressions-narratives about sea voyages and discoveries in the Middle East and Africa since ancient egypt and Phoenicia until the reign of the Arab caliphs and the Ottoman sultans. In addition to admirals, politicians and merchants, on its pages we meet scientists and poets. More than once the author also quotes the Koran, moreover, in his own poetic translation, which he began to work on in the middle of the 20th century, when the first edition of the book was just being prepared for publication, and finished more than thirty years later, in 1995. It is not difficult for an attentive reader to notice the following feature of Shumovsky's translations: they become more dry and literal when it comes to sailing directions and maritime affairs, more relaxed and free in artistic Arabic texts, including verses of the Koran. More consistently, the author implements his thoughts on the significance of literary translation in everything that concerns less special areas of medieval Arab-Muslim culture than navigation.
February 2 marks the 106th anniversary of the birth of an outstanding figure Russian science- Teodor Adamovich Shumovsky. site recalls life path linguist, orientalist, arabist, candidate of philology and doctor of historical sciences, poet and a man of amazing destiny.
Teodor Adamovich Shumovsky was born in Zhitomir on February 2, 1913. Shumovsky's mother, Amalia Fominichna Kaminskaya, was a pianist; father, Adam Vikentievich Shumovsky, was a bank employee. Teodor Adamovich spent his childhood and youth in Shamakhi (Azerbaijan), the ancient capital of the Shirvan kingdom, where his family moved during the First World War. Walks in the surrounding mosques and Muslim cemeteries, where there were many inscriptions in Arabic, aroused his interest in Arabic studies. He began his educational and working biography as a student at the Mining Institute in Moscow, and then as a miner at a mine in the Donbass. But while working in the mine, he still did not stop dreaming about Arabic studies. Having written a letter to academician Nikolai Yakovlevich Marr, he learned about the Historical and Linguistic Institute in Leningrad (the predecessor of the Oriental Faculty of Leningrad University) and in 1932 became his student.
In 1938, Teodor Shumovsky, Lev Gumilyov and Nikolai Yerekhovich, students of Leningrad University, were accused of leading the youth wing of the mythical Progressive Party and of various anti-Soviet activities. After the intervention of lawyers hired by Anna Akhmatova, Lev Gumilyov's mother, the original sentence was overturned. Despite this, all three defendants were sent to camps to serve their sentences. Shumovsky and Gumilyov were initially exiled to Vorkuta, and then sent to various camps. Nikolai Yerekhovich was sent to Kolyma, where he died in 1946. The immediate reason for the conclusion of T. A. Shumovsky could be a public speech in defense of his teacher - acad. I. Yu. Krachkovsky. Shumovsky openly expressed his negative attitude towards Klimovich's article, in which he accused the academician of "groveling before the West." According to Shumovsky's memoirs, he was also presented with written testimony from the later famous Assyriologist and Semitologist I. M. Dyakonov, who described Shumovsky as "insane." Shumovsky was also blamed for concealing his Polish origin. During his imprisonment, T. A. Shumovsky, in spite of everything, continued his creative activity through writing and translating poems (from memory), as well as studying languages from representatives of various nationalities. These classes supplemented the classical oriental education received by Shumovsky at the university and laid the foundation for his views on both historical processes and linguistics, which differ from those accepted in traditional science. Despite the end of his term in 1944, T. A. Shumovsky was left in the camp until the end of the war.
Shumovsky was released from the camp to the settlement in 1946. At this time, he worked at the Novgorod Institute for the Improvement of Teachers, was able to simultaneously graduate from Leningrad University and defend his Ph.D. thesis on the topic "Three unknown directions of Ahmad ibn Majid." In 1948, Shumovsky was sentenced to a second term and served it in the Krasnoyarsk Territory in Ozerlag. In the same 1948, Shumovsky wrote a letter to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR with a request to give him the opportunity to complete work on Arabic sailing directions and thereby “develop a new area in Soviet oriental studies” in exchange for a life sentence. The appeal was left unanswered. In the early 1950s, in despair that he would ever be released, Shumovsky began studying medicine with the aim of becoming a paramedic and working in remote villages. But in 1956 he was finally released. Shumovsky received full rehabilitation on his both conclusions only in 1963, having written 110 applications to various courts.
In 1956, thanks to the personal support of Academician I. A. Orbeli, Shumovsky was able to work at the Institute of Oriental Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences (Leningrad branch). Shumovsky's academic activity at the Institute began with the publication of "Three Unknown Pilots", which were subsequently translated into Portuguese and Arabic. In 1965, Shumovsky defended his doctoral dissertation on the theme "Arabic Naval Encyclopedia of the 15th century", based on the study and translation of the most important work of Ahmad ibn Majid "The Book of Benefits on the Fundamentals and Rules of Marine Science". This work caused great scientific controversy, which complicated the position of Shumovsky in the Academy of Sciences. Other significant complications occurred as a result of the publication of the books By the Sea of Arabic Studies (1975) and Memoirs of an Arabist (1978), in which Shumovsky presented an alternative view of the development of Arabic studies in the USSR.
In retirement, Teodor Shumovsky completed his work on Arab navigation. He prepared and published a critical edition of the Arab Naval Encyclopedia (1986), as well as popular science books In the Footsteps of Sinbad the Sailor. Oceanic Arabia" (1986) and "The Last Lion of the Arabian Seas" (1999). He also articulated his views on the linguistic process in Oroxology (2002). His most significant work of this period was the first poetic translation of the Koran in Russia. Despite his advanced age, until his last days Teodor Adamovich continued his active creative activity, preparing for publication an anthology of his poems and translations of his favorite poets of the East, and began work on the translation of the Epic of Gilgamesh.
At the crossroads of the northern capital
Atlantis flies on a lathered horse,
And the stiff shadow of the empress
In the Venetian window rushes about.
Leaf after leaf drops the drooping maple
To the whisper of the waters, to the sleepy stream.
I wander alone, tired and hushed,
And I remember my youth.
And on my own when I am sad,
One thought haunts me:
That we are leaves on the eternal waters of life,
That everything will pass - throwing and flying.
