By Ruba Hattar
Long awaited Arabic translation of the book The Venture of Islam by Marshall Hodgson has just been published. It consists of 2,320 pages divided into three volumes. The translator Osama Gawji spent three years translating the book and checking its concepts and terminology.
Distinguished American academic Marshall Hodgson spent twelve years writing this book, which was not published until six years after his death in 1974. It became a basic reference for students of Orientalism, world history and the sociology of Islam.
Famous Palestinian scholar and writer Edward Said described the book saying; "With the exception of the book The Venture of Islam, written by the late Marshall Hodgson, it has not happened that the public of intellectuals have found a general book on Islam with such honesty."
Albert Hourani, said: “Marshall Hodgson presented us with a framework of understanding that is perhaps no less valuable than that of his great predecessor Ibn Khaldun."
The Venture of Islam has been honored as a magisterial work of the mind since its publication in early 1975. In this three-volume study, illustrated with charts and maps, Hodgson traces and interprets the historical development of Islamic civilization from before the birth of Muhammad to the middle of the twentieth century. This work grew out of the famous course on Islamic civilization that Hodgson created and taught for many years at the University of Chicago.
Osama Gawji is a researcher, translator and poet, for whom the following translations were published: “Fields of Blood: Religion and History of Violence” by Karen Armstrong, “Islam, Secularism and Liberal Democracy” by Nader Hashemi, and “The Myth of Religious Violence” by William Kavanaugh.
Marshall G. S. Hodgson (1922-1968) was an influential scholar of Islamic religion and culture. He taught at the University of Chicago and chaired the Committee on Social Thought. At his death at age 46, he left behind a manuscript that would become a magisterial three-volume book, The Venture of Islam, published posthumously by the Press. The Venture of Islam has shaped all subsequent study of Islam.
The new book is currently available in the Arab Network libraries in Beirut and Istanbul.
