Diyâr, 6. Jg., 1/2025, S. 44–59, DOI: 10.5771/2625-9842-2025-1-44 Hasan Çolak TOBB University of Economics and Technology & Romanian Academy 1 hasanxcolak@gmail.com Multilingualism as a Form of Transcultural Expertise: A Study of Multilingual Ottoman Muslim Intellectuals in the Eighteenth Century 2 Abstract The Ottoman Empire is often presented as a space in which a myriad of people using different languages coexisted. However, scholars have often taken multilingualism in the Ottoman world for granted and, despite some valuable exceptions, they have rarely ventured to study it. Likewise, they have often focused on the multiplicity of the languages spoken in the Ottoman Empire rather than the people who spoke, wrote, and interacted with each other in these languages. This paper proposes to analyse how multilingual Ottoman translators defined their expertise by virtue of their knowledge of languages that their audiences did not necessarily know. As a case study, it focuses on a joint translation of Aristotle through Ioannis Kottounios’ commentary by a Greek-speaking Muslim and a Turkish-speaking Orthodox Christian in the eighteenth century. Drawing on the oft-cited metaphor of the tower of Babel, the essay engages with a discussion of transculturality in the Ottoman world of translation as expertise. Next, it explores how, if at all, these translators staged their expertise. It then analyses how their performing and staging of expertise was received by their primary audiences. Finally, it contextualises this collaboration among the seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Muslim intellectuals who used sources written in Greek and Latin but produced works on ancient Greek history, philosophy and science in what the Ottomans called the elsine-i selâse, ‘the three languages,’ consisting of Turkish, Arabic and Persian. Keywords: expertise, multilingualism, Ottoman culture, intellectual history, transculturality I live in a place, that very well represents the tower of Babel: in Pera they speak Turk- ish, Greek, Hebrew, Armenian, Arabic, Persian, Russian, Sclavonian, Wallachian, German, Dutch, French, English, Italian, Hungarian; and what is worse, there are ten of these languages spoken in my family. My grooms are Arabs; my footmen French, English, and Germans; my nurse an Armenian; my housemaids Russians; half a dozen other servants, Greeks; my steward an Italian, my janizaries Turks, so that I live in the perpetual hearing of this medley of sounds, which produces a very extraordinary effect upon the people that are born here; for they learn all these lan- 1 I am thankful to Barbara Henning, Taisiya Leber, Teymour Morel, Ani Sargsyan, and the two anonymous readers for their comments and criticisms. 2 This research is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation pro- gramme (Grant Agreement No. 883219-AdG-2019 – Project TYPARABIC). https://doi.org/10.5771/2625-9842-2025-1-44, am 19.05.2025, 11:49:09 Open Access – - https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/de/agb