Leads for Arabic Translations of Pali Canon

I’ve been studying Arabic for my career and I thought it’d be fun to read the dhamma in Arabic too. I checked SuttaCentral and found nothing, except the website got a bit glitchy for some reason. Checking google doesn’t lead to any translations, just stats of Buddhist living in Arabic speaking countries. I’m sure Islamic scholars would have taken a crack at the Pali canon since they love a good literary debate, but I’m not sure where to look now.

Does anyone have any leads on where I can find translations of Pali Canon into Arabic (or any Buddhist canon perhaps)?

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There used to be an online edition of an Arabic translation of the Dhammapada by سعدي يوسف, but the link I have to the pdf file seems to be dead now:

al-Damapada

You might try googling for the translator’s name and the Dhp’s name in Arabic: الدامابادا

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Whoops, just remembered that I have a copy of the translation on a backup disk. :blush:

Dhammapada Arabic (Saadi Yusuf).pdf (3.0 MB)

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I think the only one is this: SuttaCentral

You may also be interested in these threads:
https://discourse.suttacentral.net/search?q=arabic

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The translation in the link you provided is of the Karaniya Metta Sutta. The translator uses slang Egyptian version of Arabic. I Personally did not enjoy reading it! :expressionless: I think the translation by Saadi Yousef of the Dhammapada is much better.

@ZenKen some Arabic poems written by Islamic scholars are very Dhammic. You might enjoy the following two:

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Great question! Many thanks!

Would be wonderful to have more Arabic translations on the site.

Re:

Dhammapada Arabic (Saadi Yusuf).pdf (3.0 MB)

Would one of our Arabic-speaking friends perhaps be able to give a translation of the copyright notice page (unfortunately the pdf seems to be an image rather than selectable text, so I can’t use Google Translate)? Could be worth checking to see if there’s a possibility this can be added to SC.

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You are not allowed to publish any part of this book, or save its content, or transferring it, in any way including electronic or photocopying or any other method, unless you obtain a written permission from the publisher.

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I found a different copy by a different translator who does not seem Arab in origin. I did not find any copy rights restrictions on this copy and it includes a general introduction to the Dhammapada and the Dhamma in general

The website itself is dedicated to teach the Dhamma in Arabic

http://dharmabustan.com/

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Thanks so much!

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@Dhammanando thanks for the Dhamapada, I’ll also look up the Saedi Yusuf and see what else I can find.

Maybe I didn’t dig deep enough…

And I do enjoy sufi poetry @Bundokji, that’s why I wanted to see their take on translating the the Dhamma! I’m new to Arabic and so I found the classic Arabic in the easier to follow in that translation of the Dhammapada too. Also thanks for the Dhamma website in Arabic! You’ve given me a lot to study!

Thank you everyone for the start! I’d be happy to see if anyone finds anything else to add.

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It seems that this translation has been corrected and re-uploaded three times, but without the site owner removing the earlier versions. This is the most recent one, uploaded in March this year:

http://dharmabustan.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/Dhammapada-in-Arabic-2018.pdf

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Maybe you didn’t use the right tool for digging… :building_construction:

You can select your language opening the right upper corner menu button:

Bildschirmfoto%20von%202019-08-07%2012-44-32

Bildschirmfoto%20vom%202019-08-07%2012-46-47

Bildschirmfoto%20vom%202019-08-07%2012-47-25

Then follow the green dots in the left side menu:

… until you find the only Arabic sutta on SC:

:blush: :pray:


My goodness—no wonder you couldn’t find it! We don’t even have a proper shovel in our emojis, not to mention a digger!!! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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(In fairness, the green dots were broken due to a database bug, which I only noticed when this question was asked, so … :blush:)

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my gosh! Green dots! Such a cool feature! Thanks!

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