We recently interviewed him:

http://www.tizilcreative.com/forum/content.php?145-Interview-with-Jean-Renat-Anamah

From
Cecil Williams

Of course, Albania was also a very important link in the chain of translation across the South, linking Arabic, Persian and Turkish, particularly in the late 19th century.

What remains is that intangible intention, that force of idea as a functional and aesthetic momentum into a creative endeavor and ‘concrete’ structure.

Islam is a verb, it is an action, of a text, the Holy Koran, and it is furthered by the Sunnah, that of the living actions of the Prophet Muhammad. The great civilizations that migrated, as it was encouraged in the Koran, were people who interacted with the Local, to which they eventually inhabited. They were self proclaimed guests, to an environ whose traditions, social and cultural were to be absorbed, most particular if they had reasons and functions that pertained to the scripture of Abrahamic faith. Most notably, the Torah and the New Testament. Islam could not refute these traditions completely. There is an inclination towards a refinement of these great traditions. Therefore one can see, that Islam perpetuated the constructive aspects of theories and practices. To do otherwise would only dismantle the foundations of Islam itself. It was a brazen act of consciousness. What Islam is truly famous for is its translation movement. It absorbed not only the great books of Abrahamic faith, it also brought to the forefront the great writings , mathematical, philosophic and scientific theories of the Persians, the ‘Indian’, Chinese, and Hellenic words, into the world of the library; the Archive. Through the word, Islam became a fulcrum to the world of Knowledge. For as Mohammad Assad, the great modern translator of the Koran, born in Austria, as a Jew, died in Andulucia as a Muslim, wrote in the forward, “For those who Think”. He expands the notion that the great civilization in the South of Spain were a people who seeked and expounded knowledge through words. And these words were a cause for action. For the first word that is revealed to Muhammad, is the word ‘Recite!’.
Walking up the original minaret, in Seville, made me feel sad. All traces of that Islamic past were erased. What made it exist was that it was functioning as something other. And the fact that at the time it was one of the tallest structures of its time. So great an engineering and mathematical feat of its time.

Yet the shadow of this great Southern movement is still felt by the haunting legacy that these wonders could not have been made without the interaction with the locals, there in Andulusia, and along the way, that began from disparate sources and wonder. For Islam has no demarcation disputes. Its words, transcend, the linear world that we in the ‘west’ are bounded and limited by. Islam, true, Islam, is about action. It is an intention, bounded by the philophy and practice of a common sense. It challenges one to seek. It is an action. In this action it is bounded by a call to beauty, via its very Truth. That could be in a numeral, an equation, a call to prayer, the poetic motion of prayer, a building, or a single tile or detail. Connectivity is essential to its very action. Translation as an intellectual movement was integral to this, and Andulusia was one of the greatest experiments of human kind, that showed compassion, living together with differences could succeed. The biggest loser in this campaigne was the self imagined and taxanomic North. Who chose to label this other the, South. Such is Power, and the lack thereof. Truth will always as it is written, will always find the Light of day.