A multilingual conference dedicated to the literary heritage of a medieval poet will take place in Oxford.
The event, organised by the Oxford Interfaith Forum, will focus on the work of Georgian national poet Shota Rustaveli and will be held at All Souls College on November 6 at 4pm.
The conference will bring together 12 linguistic communities - Arabic, Bengali, Chinese, English, French, Georgian, Hebrew, Hindi, Japanese, Persian, Russian, and Spanish - to explore Rustaveli’s writings.
Dr Thea Gomelauri, director of the Oxford Interfaith Forum, said: "It is a great honour to introduce the universal values of friendship, faithfulness, and freedom, taught by Rustaveli, to the diverse linguistic communities in Oxford where scholars will recite the medieval interculturalist’s immortal words in the languages of the poem’s heroes, for the first time."
The Bodleian Library's chief librarian, Professor Richard Ovenden, will deliver the opening welcome, while the university public orator, Dr Jonathan Katz, will chair the event and present the translation of one of Rustaveli's poems into Hindi.
Muhammad Hameem Bin Sheik Alaudin, fellow of the Oxford Interfaith Forum, said: "While I am not Georgian myself, I am thrilled to be part of this wider initiative celebrating Rustaveli’s epic poem, Dressed in a Tiger’s Fur, which itself criss-crosses between diverse lands far removed from medieval Georgia, through the lens of the many different modern languages into which the work has been translated."
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