The Nabatean Agriculture by Ibn Waḥshiyya, a Pseudo-Translation by a Pseudo-Translator: The Topos of Translation in Occult Sciences.

Abstract

The text introduced in this chapter, the Kitāb al-Filāḥa al-Nabaṭiyya (Book of the Nabatean Agriculture) by Abū Bakr Aḥmad ibn Waḥshiyya (early tenth century AD), constitutes an exception in the structure of this volume. On the one hand, it shares with the other textual testimonies herein the quality of being a text that, in its original context, was regarded and presented as a translation; on the other, it has proven to be impossible to identify a single genuine source text for the Filāḥa al-Nabaṭiyya. This means that the preface, which claims that the text is a translation of an approximately 20,000-year-old original Babylonian source, is not reliable; we must therefore assume that there has been no actual linguistic-transfer operation that could be reconstructed and evaluated. From this perspective, the Filāḥa al-Nabaṭiyya fits into the category of pseudo- or fictitious translations, and one might wonder whether such a testimony can be of any value in a volume studying the social and cultural history of the translation of real scientific texts. However, I will argue in the following that the Filāḥa al-Nabaṭiyya is very relevant to a better understanding of the function of translation and translated texts in the cultural system of ʿAbbāsid and Buyid Baghdad. To this end, I shall first introduce the concept of pseudo-translation as developed in translation studies; I shall then present the text by Ibn Waḥshiyya and sketch the current state of research into it and the complexities of its textual history. I shall further discuss the extent to which the concept of ‘pseudo-translation’ serves as an analytical tool in evaluating the relevance of Filāḥa al-Nabaṭiyya in the context of translation history. Finally, I shall translate and comment on the preface, which is one of the most significant peritextual passages in the Filāḥa al-Nabaṭiyya.