We noted previously that official efforts by Egypt’s religious establishment – represented by Al-Azhar University – have been eclipsed by translations by men associated with the institution. Today’s post concerns one of those. The 1st edition (2007) of “The Gracious Quran: A modern-phrased interpretation in English” is particularly fine, in two volumes: one with the …
Qur’an translations often play a part in familiarizing children with the scripture. Many of them are based on traditional pedagogical approaches, e.g. as a backdrop to teaching the recitation of the shortest surahs in Arabic. In contrast, “The Qur’an for children and adults” (“Der Koran für Kinder und Erwachsene”) by Lamya Kaddor and Rabeya Müller …
The most recent translation of the Qur’an into Russian, produced by the Kazan Muftiyat in 2019, can tell us much about Muslim theological polemics in contemporary Russia. Widely discussed on social media, the Kalam Sharif translation claims to be the only Sunni “orthodox” translation of Qur’anic meanings corresponding to Maturidi/Ashari theology. As well as the …
Among nearly a dozen modern translations of the Qur’an into Italian, the one by Hamza Roberto Piccardo (born 1952) plays an important role for the Islamic community in the country. First of all, it seems to be the first complete Muslim translation of the Qur’an from Arabic. The Ahmadi translation into Italian (London, 1986) is …
Qur’an translation of the week #27: The Qur’an in Italian Read More »
To mark the arrival of a certain president-elect (!), this week’s post concerns another “muntakhab” – a project to standardise Qur’an translation according to the scholarship of Egypt’s Al-Azhar University. “Al-Muntakhab fi tafsir al-Qur’an” is better translated as ‘The Select Interpretation of the Qur’an’. This thread draws numerous points from Stefan Wild’s paper on “Muslim …
Qur’an translation of the week #26: Al-Montakhab Read More »
An Indonesian Qur’an translation for women – does this mean a feminist translation? No. It means that, in a country with a market economy and a large urban Muslim middle class, publishers have discovered women as a lucrative target group of bilingual Qur’an editions, just as there is a substantial market for children’s books teaching …
Qur’an translation of the week #25: Indonesian Qur’an translation for women Read More »
What should the criteria be for someone aiming to translate the Qur’an? The debates around these issues surrounded the Qur’anic translation of Dr. Magomed-Nuri Osmanov (1924-2015), a Dagestani philologist and specialist in Oriental languages. Osmanov’s work represents a continuation of the Russian academic tradition of making Muslim scripture accessible for the vast Russian-speaking audience. Despite …
Qur’an translation of the week #24: Translations by Magomed-Nuri Osmanov Read More »
With around 600,000 native speakers in present-day Ukraine, Uzbekistan, and Turkey and Romania, the Crimean Tatar language is among the world’s endangered languages. With at least half of its speakers living in Crimea, any news of religious translations draws great attention and tends to be seen by Crimean Tatars as a step towards the preservation …
Qur’an translation of the week #23: The Qur’an in Crimean Tatar Read More »
The Qur’an famously has a recited/compiled order which differs from the order of its revelation/proclamation. Some non-Muslim translators have ‘restored’ chronology. But how about Muslim translations to English? Muslim scholars have always treated revelatory order as significant, as observed in tafsīr and subgenres of naskh and asbāb al-nuzūl. However, the challenge of constructing a detailed …
Qur’an translation of the week #22: Muslim translations to English Read More »
The first Dutch Qur’an translation of the 20th century was authored by a young Javanese Muslim, Soedewo (1906–1971), and printed in Batavia in 1934 for an Indonesian audience. While criticized by some ulama for being an Ahmadiyya translation, it was enthusiastically hailed by Indonesian Sunni intellectuals. For several decades, it was probably the most widely …
Qur’an translation of the week #21: Soedewo and the Dutch Qur’an in Indonesia Read More »
