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, was the last to be produced during the lifetime of the author and also the last to be authorized by him. In 1985, a new, revised, edition was produced by the Saudi-based King Fahd Qur’an Glorious Qur’an Printing Complex (KFGQPC). Later, in 1989, a third edition was published as a joint endeavor by the International Institute of Islamic Thought (IIIT) and Amana Publications. This version was extremely popular the world over: for instance, it has been repeatedly reprinted by the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs (TDRA). Most recently, a new edition (with more than 800 changes to Yusuf Ali’s original!) was published by the World Islamic Call Society (Tripoli, Libya) in 2008 (see: Qur’an translation of the week #180: Australian Edition of Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s The Holy Qur’ān).
What reminds really intriguing is the fact that, before the publication of all of these institutional prints in the KSA, the USA, Turkey and Libya, Yusuf Ali’s was also officially published in 1965 by the Muslim World League (MWL), at the time an emerging global organization with headquarters in Mecca. It seems that this was not only the first English translation of the Qur’an printed in the Arabian Peninsula, but also the first Qur’an translation – in the modern sense of the word – published in Saudi Arabia in any language. This raises the intriguing questions of how (and why) did the MWL choose to print this particular translation, and does it differ from previous editions?
One might, in fact, also ask whether this Qur’an translation was really the first to be published by the MWL or if this honor actually falls to Muhammad Asad’s The Message of the Qur’an, which the organization also printed as a partial translation (suras 1-9) in 1964. The answer is both yes and no. ‘Yes’ because The Message of The Qur’an, which Muhammad Asad started work on while living in Switzerland, was financed by the Muslim World League, but ‘no’ because the edition was issued by MWL representatives in Geneva (and actually printed in the Netherlands) and an MWL committee actually prohibited not only its distribution inside the KSA, but also its production under the MWL brand abroad (see details: Qur’an translation of the week #178: The Message of the Qur’an by Muhammad Asad: the forgotten story of the first, 1964 edition – GloQur- The Global Qur’an).
There may also be some kind of connection between Asad and Ali’s translations: In his preface to his 1964 editionof The Message of the Qur’an, Muhammad Asad mentions that it was one Muḥammad Sarūr al-Ṣabbān (1898–1972), Secretary General of the MWL, who secured funding for his project. What is interesting is that Muḥammad Sarūr al-Ṣabbān also wrote a preface to the 1965 edition of Yusuf Ali’s The Holy Qur’an, in which he makes no mention of Muhammad Asad at all! While introducing Yusuf Ali’s work, he mentions Muhammad Ali’s 1917 translation and Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall’s 1930 rendition, praising both authors for their ‘commendable efforts’ (juhdan mashkūran). This introduction is clearly dated to January 17, 1965, and the first copies of Muhammad Asad’s Qur’an translation were printed in September 1964 and arrived in Geneva in early October of the same year. Later, they were sent to Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other countries for distribution, as Muhammad Asad’s wife, Pola Hamida Asad, notes in one of her published letters. If we are to believe that some copies of Asad’s translation had already made their way to the MWL headquarters in Saudi Arabia in January of 1965, just in three month after being printed, the most evident reason for Muḥammad Sarūr al-Ṣabbān (who was well acquainted with Muhammad Asad’s work from the very beginning) to ignore his Message of the Qur’an, as it had never existed, was probably due to sensitivities relating to the controversy that had begun to already surround it. Dissatisfied with Asad’s approach to verses that dealt with a number of theologically sensitive issues such as the ‘death’ of Jesus, and his explanation of miracles, the MWL decided to turn to another Muslim-authored translation of the Qur’an instead.
It is also significant that, in his preface, Muḥammad Sarūr al-Ṣabbān uses the formal expression tarjamat al-maʿānī (‘translation of the meanings’) and emphasizes Yusuf Ali’s use of tafsīrs and other extra-Qur’anic sources to inform his translation choices. He justifies the permissibility of this kind of translation, using same argument that many Azhari scholars did during the 1930s and 1940s: many Orientalists and ‘enemies of Islam’ have already undertaken such translations, and neglecting such an important tool, which could be used to promote a ‘correct understanding of the Qur’an’, was a weakness on the part of Muslim states. Knowing what the concept of ‘correctness’ of translation meant for many Saudi institutions, who adhered to a predominantly Salafi reading of the Qur’an, the question arises as to whether this MWL edition was edited in any way. Another introduction to the edition, signed by a well-known Syrian scholar of calligraphy, Aḥmad al-Qāsimī (1896–1993), makes reference to the fact that an al-Azhar University committee had revised the Arabic text of this edition. It seems that some scholars had urged that the Arabic text of Yusuf Ali’s translation, which was based on the Indian muṣḥaf, be amended to conform to the Cairo edition. Still, as the introduction says, the changes made to the Qur’anic orthography and diacritical marks were ‘only minor’. Al-Qāsimī’s introduction also states that the committee worked on the Arabic text from 1963 to 1964 at the request of the MWL. This clarifies the situation: the Saudis had had an interest in Yusuf Ali’s translation ever since the very beginning of MWL’s activities in 1962, and controversy over Muhammad Asad translation had simply accelerated their efforts to get it out in print. Both volumes of the 1965 MWL edition are almost identical to the 1946 edition printed in New York, and it looks as if no one intervened in the English text at all. Printed in Beirut and then distributed in the KSA and beyond, the 1965 MWL edition also includes a preface by someone named Khalīl al-Rawwāf (1895–2000), a Saudi personality with a fascinating biography who was the first Arab actor in Hollywood and also a translator and promoter of Islam. Khalīl al-Rawwāf was a copyright holder for the 1946 New York edition of The Holy Qur’an and probably had some personal connections with Yusuf Ali before this death in 1953. He writes in this preface: ‘I have undertaken the publication of this magnificent translation of the Holy Al-Qur’an as rendered into English in commemoration of the visit to the United States of America in 1946 of the Saudi delegation headed by His Excellency Sheikh Abdulla Es-Sulaiman El-Hamdan Treasurer of the Royal Saudi Arabian Kingdom’.
Over ten years later, in 1978, the Muslim World League went on to also publish Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall’s translation, and Yusuf Ali’s translation was never again printed in the same form as the 1965 edition. Since 1985 it has only been published in a revised form by the KFGQPC, which took over from, and replaced, the MWL. However, the 1965 edition found its way into to a number of libraries in the Middle East, Europe, and the USA, and remains an interesting footnote in the history of Qur’an translation in the Middle East, during an era in which state-supported Muslim activism began to emerge.
Mykhaylo Yakubovych