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 to assert the superiority of their own faith. Christian missionaries, in particular, were convinced that the time had come to convert Muslims to Christianity. They frequently challenged Muslim scholars to public debates which attracted large audiences in which they presented their religious teachings.
One of the earliest and most famous of these debates took place in Agra in 1854, when the Islamic scholar Raḥmatullāh Kayrānawī debated the German missionary and Christian apologist Karl Gottlieb Pfander on various issues related to Christianity and Islam. This event, which attracted hundreds of attendees of both faiths, shaped the future course of Christian proselytism in the region. Naturally, both sides claimed victory.
How is this incident connected to the Urdu Quran? Its author, Imad-ud-Din Lahiz, was a close friend of Raḥmatullāh Kayrānawī at the time. Born around 1830 in Panipat, North India, Imad-ud-Din studied at Agra College and later became a preacher at the Jami Mosque in Agra. However, after assisting Kayrānawī during the debate and engaging with other scholars on Christianity, he began to doubt the truthfulness of Islam.
According to Imad-ud-Din’s autobiography, he continued to preach and observe Islamic precepts until 1860, yet he found no real comfort in his faith. This inspired him to study Christianity more deeply, and after two years of studying the Bible and the Christian faith he was baptized in 1866. His conversion was viewed as a major success by Christian scholars of the region. The number of educated Muslims embracing Christianity was increasing, and former Muslims like him were invaluable assets in missionary work, as they were fluent in Urdu and well-versed in Islamic sources—an undeniable advantage when engaging in debates with Muslim scholars.
Following his conversion, Imad-ud-Din Lahiz worked as a missionary for the Christian Mission Society and authored numerous books that criticized Islamic teachings and the Prophet Muhammad. Naturally, his writings primarily targeted Muslims, whom he hoped to convert. In pursuit of the same goal, he also produced an Urdu translation of the Qurʾan, published in 1894.
It was by no means unprecedented for missionaries to attempt to reach a wider Muslim readership through Qurʾan translations. As mentioned in a previous post, Christian scholars had already published annotated Urdu Qurʾan translations (https://gloqur.de/quran-translation-of-the-week-209-the-quran-a-christian-version-of-a-muslim-authored-quran-translation/). However, these earlier works relied on previously published translations by Muslim authors, which Christian scholars then supplemented with their own critical annotations. Imad-ud-Din took a different approach: rather than annotating an existing Muslim translation, he translated the Qurʾan himself.
The first edition of his translation was published in Amritsar in the Urdu script. Six years later, another edition appeared, this time in Roman Urdu, printed by the Methodist Mission Press in Lucknow. In the following, I will briefly examine the second edition.
Imad-ud-Din Lahiz’s Urdu translation of the Qur’an exhibits several distinctive features. He begins each sura by stating its name, its place of revelation (Mecca or Medina), and the total number of verses it contains. Unlike many Urdu translations of his time, Imad-ud-Din’s employs a consistent verse numbering system throughout, with the number placed at the beginning of each verse—a method adopted from Gustav Flügel’s edition of the Qur’an. Most contemporary Muslim-authored Urdu translations instead marked the end of a verse with a symbol.
One of the most significant features of his translation is that Imad-ud-Din does not use footnotes to comment on specific verses; rather, he provides explanations within the target text itself. This can be seen, for instance, in his translation of Q 2:259. Abdel Haleem renders this verse as:
‘Or take the one who passed by a ruined town. He said, ‘How will God give this life when it has died?’ So God made him die for a hundred years, and then raised him up.’
His translation reflects the fact that in the original Arabic the verse does not explicitly identify the protagonist of this story. In contrast, Imad-ud-Din’s translation adds context:
‘Or take the one (Priest Ezra) who passed by a ruined town (Jerusalem) …’
While many commentators associate the unnamed figure in this story with Ezra, others have also been identified as potential protagonists, for example al-Khiḍr. Imad-ud-Din’s interpolation demonstrates his familiarity with Qur’anic exegesis and his intent to provide readers with contextual understanding, but also removes the textual ambiguity of the original Arabic.
Some of Imad-ud-Din’s interventions in the text reflect his critical stance toward Islam and highlight the polemic motivations that underly his translation. This is evident, for example, in his translation of Q 93:7, which contains the phrase: wa-wajadaka ḍāllan fa-hadā. This can be translated as:
‘He (i.e., God) found you lost/erring/unguided and guided you.’
Imad-ud-Din translates it as:
‘He found you lost (you were a polytheist like all the others) and He guided you (towards Islam).’
It was common for Christian scholars and missionaries to reference various Qur’anic verses to argue that Muhammad was not immune to sin. This was important to counter the doctrine of prophetic ‘isma. E.M. Wherry, for instance, in his English Qur’an commentary, written in the 1880s, suggests that this verse indicates that Muhammad committed idolatry before his prophethood, asserting that he was thus not free from sin. It seems this was the reason behind Imad-ud-Din’s translation choice to add in a phrase in which Muhammad is described as being ‘a polytheist like all the others’.
Obviously, Imad-ud-Din’s translation was not well received in Muslim circles. Muslim critics asserted that he lacked knowledge of Arabic. The Ahmadiyya community, for instance, published a review of his translation that criticized the author for various mistakes. This does not negate the significance of Imad-ud-Din’s endeavor, which marks the beginning of a new genre of Qur’an translation—translations produced by former Muslims. Before him, translations were either penned by Christian scholars or Muslims, but not by Christian converts with an Islamic background.
Kamran Ahmad Khan