I am trying to learn Arabic. Reader, it is hard work.  I have my own hackneyed script that I repeat to myself to excuse my lack of progress: I clearly must have the wrong teacher, or bought the wrong textbooks, or enrolled on the wrong course. Or perhaps I am just too old/dim-witted/time-poor to succeed. Whenever my mind starts to deviate onto this path of self-pity and resignation, much-deserved chastisement usually comes in the form of Simon Ockley popping into my head. Ockley (1678-1720), scholar of Arabic, Anglican minister, sometime inhabitant of debtors’ prison, bearer of the most enormous chip on his shoulder on account of his position in society- his life was marred with such spectacular hardship and ill luck that it warranted a chapter in Isaac Disraeli’s record of the tragedy of pursuing a career in writing, entitled Calamities of Authors (1812).  I often wonder how he managed to learn Arabic at all, let alone translate the hugely important Arabic texts he did. But learn Arabic he did, despite never having travelled to Arabic-speaking lands, a privilege afforded to his famous predecessor in Arabic studies, Edward Pococke. And translate he did, despite his relatively short life, exposing the English-reading public to the mental and spiritual world of Muslims in the process.

Ockley suffered throughout his career from an extreme lack of funds. Of a humble background, his stipends as vicar of Swavesey and later, as holder of the Thomas Adams Chair of Arabic at Cambridge were never sufficient to support his wife and six children. Therefore, securing the patronage of wealthy individuals to support his academic endeavours was crucial for his survival. This was not an easy task, in large part due to his peculiar character- he simultaneously possessed a haughty intellectual snobbery towards the upper classes who were the chief financial backers of Arabic scholarly projects, and a cringing obsequity to these same people who had the power to furnish him with desperately needed funds. He struggled to present himself favourably in polite society, and was described by an acquaintance as ‘somewhat crazed’. Such a handicap was potentially ruinous for someone who lived or died by attracting wealthy protectors, and he felt it keenly. Hence we see him writing a pleading letter to his powerful patron Lord Harley after Ockley had heard gossip about himself, namely that he had got drunk at an exclusive dinner party and embarrassed the other guests. Describing himself as ‘a person whose Education was far distant from the politenesse of a Court’, he explained that ‘it is not the Talent of every well meaning man to converse with his superiors with due decorum.’ It is clear, however, that he despised having to bow his head in humility to his supposed ‘superiors’, whom he generally regarded as ignoramuses. In one of his works he bitterly commented on how his lower position in society meant that he had to take unqualified criticism of his work meekly: ‘I forget that I am a translator, and run the hazard of incurring the Displeasure of a polite sort of little Criticks, who will take it extremely amiss if People of our inferior Class shall presume to encroach upon their Prerogative’.

This oscillation Ockley experienced between his natural inclination to despise his class superiors and his need to pander to them was mirrored by the balance he had to manage in his translation activities. There was a seeming tension between his staunchly traditional Anglicanism and the decidedly unorthodox subject matter he translated, such as the 12th century Islamic tale of mystical experience, Hayy Ibn Yaqthan (1708), or the translation assistance he provided to the Unitarian William Whiston (who was later expelled from Cambridge for his rejection of the Holy Trinity, based in part on his conclusions derived from the Christian Arabic texts Ockley had translated for him). Ockley usually tackled this by writing disavowals of the more theologically dubious elements of the texts he had just translated and published, but the necessity of doing so highlights the risks that dabbling in certain areas of Arabic translation held for a clergyman of the early eighteenth century.

The apex of his achievements was the groundbreaking two-volume The Conquest of Syria, Persia, and AEgypt, by the Saracens, more commonly known as History of the Saracens (1708-1718), which used primarily Arabic manuscript sources to chart the dramatic history of the early Muslims from the death of the Prophet Muhammad[1] until the death of the fifth Umayyad Caliph Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan ibn al-Hakam.  Nothing like it existed in the English language prior to its publication- a history of early Islam, based on Arabic sources, by a translator who was adamant to avoid polemic and to ‘let them [the Arabs] tell their own Story their own way’. It is also a hugely entertaining read. But Simon Ockley paid a high price for his passion project. The gargantuan effort of translating, editing and writing involved in producing History of the Saracens possessed his waking hours, damaged his health and siphoned the little money he had away from his large family to pay for bouts of extended research in Oxford. From there he wrote a letter to his daughter, lamenting that ‘If I continue in the same course, that is, from the time I rise in the morning till I can see no longer at night, I cannot pretend once to entertain the least thought of seeing home till Michaelmas. Were it not…in the hopes of obliging my country with the history of the greatest empire the world ever yet saw, I would sooner do almost anything than submit to the drudgery.’ In 1717 Ockley found himself a prisoner in Cambridge Castle on account of unpaid debts. It is not surprising, therefore, A.J. Arberry points out in his Oriental Essays (1960), that so many of the Arabic proverbs Ockley selected for his collection Sentences of Ali (which I wrote about previously) were on the subject of patience in the face of adversity.

By Ockley’s own account, prison was not all bad- it afforded him some time away from his family to complete the second volume of History of the Saracens. He wrote to Lord Harley (who had by now fallen out of favour with the court and was a prime example of Ockley’s bad luck in securing patronage) that ‘I enjoy more repose indeed here [in prison] than I have tasted these many years’.  He was, however, not alone in his prison cell. He complained in a letter to a friend that he was being frequently tormented by a cacodaemon- an evil spirit probably better recognized in modern parlance as a poltergeist, or jinn. The jinn would shake his prison bed, and ‘entertained me with variety of Sounds and capricious troublesome motions in different parts of the Room… It is exceedingly troublesome & terrible’. And his troubles did not end on his release- he later wrote to his friend that the spirit had accompanied him out of prison and presumably continued to harass him. He died in 1720, leaving his wife and children in penury.

So, my internal reproach against defeat in Arabic runs thus: Are you studying in a debtors’ prison? No. Are you the sole breadwinner for your large, impecunious family? No. Are you unable to travel to Arabic- speaking lands or procure the assistance of native Arabic speaking teachers? No- I live in Dubai! Are you debilitatingly ill at ease in polite society? No (arguably). Are you being haunted by a jinn? No. Are you alive in the eighteenth century, with no internet, no comprehensive textbooks, no electricity to see your books after the sun goes down? No, no, no.  This extensive list of obstacles that Ockley met and overcame, and that I have fortunately avoided is usually enough to galvanize me to pull my socks up and have another crack at Modern Arabic Grammar.  Because even though the pursuit of Arabic often feels like misery, it is, as Ockley describes, ‘a misery of our own choosing’- and we have chosen it because ultimately, we believe the reward to be well worth the effort.

Title Image: ‘Philosophus Autodidactus’ by Ibn Tufayl, translated by Edward Pococke, accessed here

[1] Peace be upon him