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The Translator

By Leila Aboulela

المترجمة

Leila Aboulela's novel of a devout Sudanese widow in Aberdeen — a landmark of English-language Muslim fiction.

Depth

At a glance

Identifiers
Wikidata
Review
Draft Completeness 1/5 · Help complete it

In time

199020002010

LiteratureSpirituality and SufismMuslim minorities under non-Muslim rule

Overview

The novel by Leila Aboulela (1999): Sammar, a Sudanese widow in London and Aberdeenshire, between her faith and her orientalist friend Rae, between one prayer and another. 1

Legacy

The first novel in English to make a Sudanese Muslim woman a spiritual centre rather than an ethnographic subject; Aboulela founded a new Arab-English voice. 1

People and things also explored

Aljamia (aljamiado: Spanish written in Arabic script, and its literature)· Babri Masjid· Prophetic adab (proper conduct)· Akhi Baba (title of the guild shaykh and tanners' head)· Integration and identity (al-indimaj wa-l-huwiyya)· The contemporary Islamic discourse — maturity versus reactivity· The angelic and the satanic inspiration (lamma)· Asking people for help (al-masala)

Sources

  1. Wikidata
Cite this page

islam.museum contributors. “The Translator”. islam.museum, https://islam.museum/en/work/al-mutarjima/. CC BY-SA 4.0. Last updated 2026-10-17.

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Related

Aljamia (aljamiado: Spanish written in Arabic script, and its literature)

Aljamia is the Spanish form of the Arabic al-'ajamiyya ('non-Arabic'), a term the Muslims of al-Andalus used for the Romance dialects of their northern neighbours, dialects coloured with Arabisms introduced from the 9th century by Mozarab emigrants. In the later Middle Ages the word came to mean Spanish written in Arabic script, and the literature in that script is called aljamiado.