Al-Azhar

Qur’an translation of the week #149: ‘God’s command’: A milestone in early Turkish Republican Qur’an translation

In 1934, the Islamic scholar, writer and journalist Ömer Rıza published a pioneering Turkish Qur’an translation-cum-commentary entitled Tanrı Buyruğu (‘God’s Command’) in Istanbul. Appearing five years after the Turkish Republic’s script reform, which abolished the use of the Arabic script, Tanrı Buyruğu was probably the first Turkish Qur’an translation to be printed in Latin script …

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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 …

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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 …

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Qur’an translation of the week #108: Al-Muntakhab in Russian- Egyptian daʿwa in the post-Soviet space

The turn of the millennium gifted Russian-speaking Muslim communities with a new Qur’an interpretation: al-Muntakhab: Tolkovanie Svi͡ashchennogo Korana na Arabskom i Russkom I͡azykakh (2000) [al-Muntakhab: Interpretation of the Holy Qur’an in Arabic and Russian languages]. This publication not only received official approval from Egypt’s al-Azhar University (which has a widespread policy of providing official sanction …

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Qur’an translation of the week #64: Polemics and da’wa between Egypt, France and Libya: Zeinab Abdelaziz’s Le Qur’an: Traduction du sens de ses Versets

What factors determine the success of a Qur’an translations, or lack thereof? Why are some translations widely sold in bookstores, distributed in mosques, used in university courses, or ubiquitous on the internet, while others are hardly known and out of print? Zeinab Abdelaziz’s Le Qur’an: Traduction du sens de ses Versets probably belongs to the …

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Qur’an translation of the week #44: “Το Ιερό Κοράνιο”: The “Al-Azhar” translation of the Qur’an into Greek

There has been a history of close interaction between the Byzantine and Arab cultures in the Mediterranean and Middle East ever since the Arab conquests in the seventh century CE. This, and the concomitant rise of Christian-Muslim polemics, resulted in the production of the first complete translation of the Qur’an into Greek before the end …

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Qur’an translation of the week #33: A translation or not a translation? Muhammad Quraish Shihab’s “Al-Qur’an & Maknanya”

“This work”, says the publisher, Lentera Hati, “was not named ‘The Qur’an and its Translation’, because its author, M. Quraish Shihab, was acutely aware that the Qur’an is a holy book that cannot possibly be translated into any other language. All that the exegetes can do is to reveal the meaning, not translate it!”Despite these …

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Qur’an translation of the week #32: “The Holy Qur’an. Meanings. In the Context of Modernity at the Beginning of the 21st Century” by Shamil Alyautdinov (2012)

This week our attention focuses on the translation made by one of the most charismatic Muslim preachers in contemporary Russia, Shamil Alyautdinov (b. 1974). An Imam in Moscow, he holds various titles in the Muslim Spiritual Administration of the European Part of Russia (DAMER). Alyautdinov is author of more than thirty books and, quite uniquely …

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Qur’an translation of the week #30: The Gracious Quran: A modern-phrased interpretation in English

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 …

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Qur’an translation of the week #26: Al-Montakhab

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 …

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