Description

A rare translation of the New Testament by Ali Ufki to Ottoman with revisions by Türabi Efendi was published in 1853 in London.

The original translator from Ottoman was a Polish musician Wojciech Bobowski (circa 1610-1675), known under his Muslim name Ali Ufki, as an attempt to present the Christian text to the Islamic world. Bobowski was born to a protestant family in Poland. In 1632 he was abducted by the Tatars and sold in Istanbul as a slave. In the new city he converted into Islam and, a talented musician and dragoman, soon entered the highest circles of the Ottoman court earning his freedom. He was known to speak 16 languages.

Ali Ufki, a deeply religious man, started translating the New Testament, with a goal to introduce the Christian text to the Islamic world for better mutual cultural understanding, in 1662 and finished it in 1664, with the last corrections made the following year.

The first printed edition was not finished until 1819 and was published in Paris in the Imprimerie impériale.

The revisions were made by Türabi Efendi. In his youth he was sent by the Egyptian administration to England, where he learned the language of the country and came into contact with the protestant religion. Allegedly he was married do a British woman. In 1865, he published a famous Ottoman cookbook in English language.

A more common version, revised by James W. Redhouse was published in 1857. It could be, that the new version was printed, after this 1853 edition was sold out in the Crimean war (for comparison see: Bruce G. Privratsky, A History of Turkish Bible Translations Annotated chronology with historical notes and suggestions for further research, 2014, p. 48. The author does not mention this 1853 edition, but it is mentioned in the Turkish version of the article).

We could find one institutional example (Universitätsbibliothek der Eberhard Karls Universität).

References: OCLC 313135237; Bruce G. Privratsky, Kitabı Mukaddes’in Türkçe Tercümelerinin Tarihçesi, 16 – 21 yy. Bütün baskıların listesi, tarihsel açıklamalar ve araştırma önerileriyle, 2013, under: 1857 – Kitâb ül-‘Ahd el-Cedîd…).