Qur’an translation of the week

Qur’an translation of the week #139: Nobre Alcorão: the Qur’an in Portuguese

The history of this translation of the Qur’an into Portuguese, printed by the King Fahd Qur’an Printing Complex (KFQPC) in 1425/2004 and widely distributed all over Brazil, has its roots in the mid 1980s. In 1984, the Muslim World League contracted a scholar of Arabic called Helmi Nasr (1922–2019) to translate the Qur’an into Portuguese. …

Qur’an translation of the week #139: Nobre Alcorão: the Qur’an in Portuguese Read More »

Qur’an translation of the week #138: Inspiration and plagiarism in translation: Cheikh Boureïma Abdou Daouda’s French Qur’an translation, published by Daroussalam

When does a translation draw inspiration from its predecessors and when is it plagiarized? The French Qur’an translation published by the private Saudi daʿwa-oriented publisher Daroussalam certainly raises this question. Compare these two translations of Q 100 (Sūrat al-ʿĀdiyāt): The one on the left was produced by Cheikh Boureïma Abdou Daouda from Niger and published …

Qur’an translation of the week #138: Inspiration and plagiarism in translation: Cheikh Boureïma Abdou Daouda’s French Qur’an translation, published by Daroussalam Read More »

Qur’an translation of the week #137: De Koran, The First Translation of the Qur’an from Arabic to Dutch.

Johannes Hendrik Kramers (also known as J.H. Kramers or Jan Kramers, 1891–1951) was born in Rotterdam on 26th February as the eldest son to Hendrik Kramers, a physician, and Jeanne Suzanne Breukelman. Kramers had a brother named Hendrik Anthony Kramers, a physicist who made important contributions to quantum mechanics and statistical physics. Unlike his father …

Qur’an translation of the week #137: De Koran, The First Translation of the Qur’an from Arabic to Dutch. Read More »

Qur’an translation of the week #136: Glorioso Corano: An Italian translation by Fuad Kabazi

Italian translations of the Qur’an are relatively plentiful, and during the second half of the twentieth century in particular new translations were produced based on the original Arabic text by translators such as A. Bausani (1955), M. Moreno (1967), F. Peirone (1979) and H. Piccardo (1996). The World Islamic Call Society (WICS, founded in 1972 …

Qur’an translation of the week #136: Glorioso Corano: An Italian translation by Fuad Kabazi Read More »

Qur’an translation of the week #135: The elusive quest for dogmatic correctness: Al-Azhar’s German Qur’an translation

In 1999, al-Azhar University in Egypt published the German version of its project to standardize Qur’an translation. Like the versions in other languages (for English and Russian, see Al-Montakhab and Al-Muntakhab In Russian- Egyptian Daʿwa In The Post-Soviet Space), this German Qur’an translation was based on the concise Qur’an commentary al-Muntakhab (‘The Select’) which purports …

Qur’an translation of the week #135: The elusive quest for dogmatic correctness: Al-Azhar’s German Qur’an translation Read More »

Qur’an translation of the week #134: The First Muslim-Authored Qur’an Translation into German

This week we look at the first Muslim-authored translation into German, which was published during World War II by Maulana Sadr-ud-Din (d. 1981), a missionary of the Lahore branch of the Ahmadiyya movement, and caused much controversy within his community. Sadr-ud-Din, who had previously worked as a missionary in Woking in the United Kingdom, arrived …

Qur’an translation of the week #134: The First Muslim-Authored Qur’an Translation into German Read More »

Qur’an translation of the week #133: Global publishers of Qur’an translations: The Conveying Islamic Message Society from Alexandria, Egypt

The Conveying Islamic Message Society (‘Jamʿiyyat Tablīgh al-Islām’, or CIMS) is one of the oldest Islamic non-government organizations in the world, and is especially interested in Islamic missionary activity, or daʿwah. The ‘call to Islam’ has always been its main priority, and it directs its mission to both Eastern and Western audiences. Now operating from …

Qur’an translation of the week #133: Global publishers of Qur’an translations: The Conveying Islamic Message Society from Alexandria, Egypt Read More »

Qur’an translation of the week #132: The inexhaustible drive for translation accuracy: Koran: Perevod na russkiĭ i͡azyk by Ural Sharipov and Raisa Sharipova ([Moscow: Vorobyev A.V., 2009] Moscow: Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, 2012)

This week our attention is focused on another attempt to translate the Qur’an into Russian by translators from an academic background. Two Tatar Islamicists, Ural Sharipov (b. 1937) and Raisa Sharipova (b. 1940), published the first edition of their translation in 2009, and the second edition in 2012. Koran: Perevod na russkiĭ i͡azyk is associated …

Qur’an translation of the week #132: The inexhaustible drive for translation accuracy: Koran: Perevod na russkiĭ i͡azyk by Ural Sharipov and Raisa Sharipova ([Moscow: Vorobyev A.V., 2009] Moscow: Institute of Oriental Studies, Russian Academy of Sciences, 2012) Read More »

Qur’an translation of the week #131: The ‘scientific miracle’ of the Qur’an brought to French readers: Le Noble Coran, Algiers 2022

The most recent French Qur’an translation, published in 2022, is also the first to be published in Algeria since the country became independent from France in 1962, or actually since the publication of the very first French Qur’an translation undertaken by Muslim authors, which appeared in 1931. This is probably at least partly due to …

Qur’an translation of the week #131: The ‘scientific miracle’ of the Qur’an brought to French readers: Le Noble Coran, Algiers 2022 Read More »

Qur’an translation of the week #130: ‘To every age its book’: An Exiled Post-Ottoman’s The Wisdom of the Qur’an (La sagesse coranique)

In 1935, the Orientalist publishing house Paul Geuthner in Paris published posthumously the last oeuvre of an exiled Turkish Muslim who had only just died of a heart attack en route from Alexandria to Europe. This work, a partial Qur’an translation titled La sagesse coranique (‘The Wisdom of the Qur’an’), was printed at the behest …

Qur’an translation of the week #130: ‘To every age its book’: An Exiled Post-Ottoman’s The Wisdom of the Qur’an (La sagesse coranique) Read More »