In recent years, Islamic publishers across the globe have developed various versions of the Qur’an for children, with the primary goal of instilling love and understanding of the holy book from an early age. Several earlier posts in the ‘Qur’an Translation of the Week’ blog have showcased intriguing variations of such editions, each influenced by […]
A guest contribution by Sheam Abdul Aziz Khan, Cardiff University Although Muḥammad al-ʿĀṣī’s translation, The Ascendant Qur’an: An English Translation of the Meanings of the Qur’an, is relatively new on the translation scene, having been published only in late 2023, some iteration of its previous incarnation, as a constitutive element of al-ʿĀṣī’s tafsīr (also published
The history of one of the most popular English translations of the Qur’an, that of the Indian-British scholar Abdullah Yusuf Ali (1872–1953), is also a story about editorial changes to published works, in this case leading to at least three revised editions. The 1946 edition of Yusuf Ali’s, which was reprinted up until the 1980s,
More than 150 Turkish translations of the Qur’an have been published in Turkey over the last hundred years, which means that any new translation is hardly likely to contain many surprises. Still, every year a couple of new translations appear: be it some kind of voluminous translation with scholarly commentaries prepared by a committee of
On April 17, 2023, a new British publisher called ‘Quwa’ (the Arabic word for ‘strength’) launched a book titled The Quran as Revealed. The launch was accompanied by intense advertising on social media, and the book was endorsed by the popular, if not entirely uncontroversial, Mufti Menk from Zimbabwe (he has 10 million followers on
Today, we will look at Urdu Quran, the first Urdu translation authored by a Christian scholar, Imad-ud-Din Lahiz, who converted from Islam to Christianity. During the nineteenth century, British India was a melting pot of various peoples and faiths where Muslims, Hindus, and Christians engaged in polemical debates as part of their missionary endeavors, each seeking
Qur’an translation of the week #211: A new genre of Qurʾan translations Read More »
The question of Qur’an translation into Bulgarian has historically mainly been associated with the Turkish-speaking minority living in the south of the country, on the border between Turkey and Greece. This community survived many challenges during the course of the twentieth century, including concerted endeavors by Christian missionaries to convert the population, and the Bulgarian
In this post, we will examine what is likely the first Urdu translation produced within a Christian missionary context: ‘The Qurán’. Published in 1844 by the Presbyterian Mission Press of Allahabad, it features Shāh ʿAbd al-Qādir’s very prominent and influential Urdu translation transcribed into Latin script. Shāh ʿAbd al-Qādir’s rendition was completed at the end of the eighteenth century and originally
The trend towards embracing the Qur’an as the primary text of Islam in Muslim-majority countries like Indonesia has led to a notable emphasis on memorization (hifz al-Qur’an) over engagement in deeper contemplation of the scripture through the mediation of tafsīrs or translations. The recent upsurge in Qur’an memorization gained momentum in 2003 with the establishment of Pesantren
In 1995, two preachers from Port Louis, the capital city of the island of Mauritius, published a Qur’an translation into Mauritian Creole. Le Saint Qur’aan did not actually claim to be a direct translation of the Arabic Qur’an, however, but was rather presented as a rendition of an Urdu Qur’an translation, the Kanz-ul-Īmān by Ahmad Reza Khan Barelwi (1856–1921).
