The term
Will it be beneficial to use the term
Interest in this topic was sparked by the usage of the word
In this article I would like to reach an understanding of what the most basic terms for God are amongst the Talysh speakers of Azerbaijan. Since the term
The term
Because of the situation’s sensitivity I could not personally interview the respondents. Political, religious and personal circumstances prohibited me from doing the research myself. The result was a small preliminary survey amongst people we could reach, rather than a full-fledged random survey.
I made use of the help of four Talysh speakers to assist me with the survey. Twenty-six questionnaires were completed with the help of four Talysh speakers. Three of the interviewers were ladies. Two of them are in their fifties, and one lady was still in her twenties. The one male interviewer is also in his fifties.
Although I could not do the survey myself, I reviewed the results with the interviewers as they were completing the questionnaires. After the first few responses were received, I realised that we did not obtain enough insights into some of the aspects I envisioned obtaining. We adjusted the questionnaires and added some indirect questions about the understanding and also the usage of the word for God in other situations. Such questions as ‘How well is the word
The Talysh language belongs to the Iranian language family (Stilo
The Talysh language is spoken by just under a million people (Lewis, Simons & Fennig
The Talysh are 99% Muslim with a very small number of Christians. The Christian population is less than 1%. Traditionally, the religion of Zoroastrianism was prevalent amongst them. Some would still profess to be Zoroastrians who have now become Muslims. The area where they live has considerable oil and gas reserves, and there are places where there are the so-called eternal burning flames – thus, explaining the traditional inclination to Zoroastrianism. No one confessed to still adhere to Zoroastrianism. Less than a third of the respondents, eight to be exact, were from a Christian background whereas the 18 remaining interviewees were from a Muslim background.
A few introductory remarks on this topic are necessary: Firstly, what are the influences that play a role in choosing a term for the translation of
Secondly, if a specific term is preferred above another, what is the
Thirdly, closely related to this, what is the
In Muslim circles there is a tendency to use the transliterated Arabic form of the word for God, namely
Therefore, the word
The first question I would like to analyse regarding how the Talysh speak to God and about God is: ‘How do you as a Talysh speaker address God?’ Further we are analysing the question, ‘What words do the Talysh people use for God?’ The following question provided an interesting result: ‘What do you call God in prayer?’ The responses to these questions were grouped together, and therefore the numbers did not always add up to 26 – the number of respondents.
All Talysh speakers call God, amongst other variants,
Terms for God.
Talysh terms for God | Total | Muslim respondents | Christian respondents |
---|---|---|---|
Xıdo | 26 | 15 | 8 |
Ilahi | 9 | 6 | 3 |
Allah | 7 | 4 | 3 |
Xəlləği-Aləm | 13 | 6 | 7 |
Xıdovandi-Aləm | 8 | 5 | 3 |
Tanrı | 1 | - | 1 |
From this table
Since blessings are a very integrated part of everyday life in the Caucuses and Iran, we added questions, which were not directly focussed on the terms for God as a verifying device. These questions focussed on the function of blessings and curses in their society. We asked what blessings and/or curses they use in certain situations, for example, when congratulating somebody or when someone was ill. This was done in order to see what form of the word for God Talysh speakers use in these situations. By asking them to provide commonly used blessings, we tried to divert their attention away from the questions about which word they use when referring to God.
In all the examples of curses and blessings that were given by the respondents, the word
In order to clarify this question we added a question like, ‘What does the usage of the word
Not a single respondent indicated that this word reminded them in any way that this is a term used only by Muslims to address their God. The questions regarding
In order not to only focus on the word
Meaning of the term
Meaning of the word Allah | Muslim responses | Christian responses |
---|---|---|
Creator | 4 | 4 |
Saviour | 2 | 3 |
Provider of everything | 3 | 4 |
Judge | 2 | 3 |
God in Spirit | 2 | 1 |
Heavenly Father | 1 | - |
The Almighty One | 2 | - |
King | 1 | - |
A strong feeling exists in the West that the word
On the other hand, the term
This brings us to the next question: Why would the Talysh translators of the Qur’an use
As mentioned above, in the West it is quite often felt that Bible translations in the Muslim dominated parts of the world should not use
In an interview with a local Christian believer, she confirmed that certain local Christian groups are insisting that
Not many respondents who were included in the survey, actually knew the term
The Arabic term for God | |
The Turkish term for God | |
The Iranian term for God |
From the survey it was clear that the majority of respondents did not have any feelings about using one of these terms, because it might convey a Muslim prejudice. Actually, a number of respondents, both Christians and Muslims, did not know the term
The strongest trend I could detect was that some respondents felt that the word
Responses regarding the word
Responses regarding the word
Responses | Number |
---|---|
Who is Tanrı? | - |
Tanrı is the God of Zoroastrianism | 2 |
Tanrı is an idol god | 3 |
Tanrı is the God of the Turkish people | 4 |
Neutral feeling about the term Tanrı | 11 |
Total amount of responses | 20 |
Did not answer – probably knew too little about the term Tanrı | 9 |
Thus, by using
Because we wanted to verify the information and cross-check the respondents answers, there was more than one question about the different terms for God. Information about
What would the perceived benefits be of using the transliterated form of the Arabic word for God, namely
Certainly in the West, when speaking English, the transliterated form of the word for the Arabic term for God carries an emotional bias indicating that they are different (Morrow
Another reference from the Asian world indicates that Christians and Hindus do not want to use the word
In Malaysia we actually have the opposite problem. Campbell and Charlie (2013:1) state that a court prohibited Christians from using the word
Since the courts prohibited Christians from using the word
In the West when the word
In our discussion, the proposition focuses on one word: the transliterated form of the word for God, namely
It is my opinion that in the West, when Muslims do not translate the word for God, but use the transliterated form
This, however, does not necessarily seem to be the case in the Middle-Eastern Turkic and Iranian speaking world. There, the same proposition in
This begs Western critics not to look at all the instances of the word
Certain further concepts from the so-called ‘Relevance theory’ of communication are applicable here. Since we do not communicate our intentions or meaning fully, we rely on the inferences that are activated by an ostensive (deliberate) stimulus that we give. A communicative stimulus is normally intended to steer the thoughts of the audience in a certain direction (Sperber & Wilson 1992:60). Such an ostensive stimulus can have a greater or lesser impact. If the information in the stimulus is exactly the same as the context, the receiver of the stimulus will not process it, because it does not need processing. If the stimulus is different, then the receiver will infer the meaning and change will take place, but only if the stimulus is not too different, too foreign or too irrelevant. If the stimulus is different
In the context of the use of the transliterated word
The biggest problem we have is that a stimulus in a Middle-Eastern Iranian context cannot be read with glasses from the West and make relevant inferences that are appropriate for a context that is not known to you.
Therefore, just using the word
I would say that in spite of the neutral feeling amongst the Talysh about the word
Therefore, when the
To conclude: the usage of
This conclusion is in line with what Ahmed (
A single utterance conveys a variety of assumptions. Some may have been specifically intended by the speaker. Others may fall within a wide range of assumptions intended by the speaker. In some cases the speaker’s intention is overt, in others it is covert, and in others an assumption is conveyed completely by accident. (p. 57)
Western affinities, understanding and emotional connotations about the word
It seems obvious that the word
As a result, critics from the West should be careful not to make a negative evaluation about the usage of the word
The author declares that he has no financial or personal relationship(s) that may have inappropriately influenced him in writing this article.
From the IBT Moscow Website (viewed 10 October 2013, from
Tatar uses the term Раббы Aллa - Rebb Allah
Kumyk uses Раббибиз Aллaгь - Rebb Allah
Azerbaijani uses the same two terms - Rəbb Allah
Talysh Qur’an viewed 16 March, from
Word of Life Church, Azerbaijan instructed their members to read
It appeared in footnote 19 of the citation.
The survey numbers do not always add up exactly, because some respondents did not answer all the questions and sometimes some of them gave more than one answer to certain questions.
Just a note about the calculation of the survey numbers: Sometimes respondents would give a response to only one of the three terms for God, but others gave more than one response per question. Therefore, the numbers do not always balance exactly.