The English Qur’an translation by M. H. Shakir is widely available today in various printed editions produced by numerous publishers, and also on websites and smartphone apps. It is sometimes mistakenly ascribed to the renowned Egyptian scholar Muḥammad Shākir (1866–1939), however he was an opponent of Qur’an translations and it is safe to assume that …
This week we will take a closer look at Muhammad Ali’s 1923 Urdu translation, Bayān al-Qurʾān. Muhammad Ali, a prominent Ahmadi scholar, ascended to the leadership of the Lahore branch following a schism within the Ahmadiyya movement in 1914. In a previous post, we introduced Muhammad Ali and his influential English Qur’an translation of 1917 …
Qur’an translation of the week #171: Muhammad Ali’s Urdu Translation: Bayān al-Qurʾān Read More »
When browsing any Muslim missionary bookstand in Europe today, it is hard to miss a particular series of Qur’an translations by a company named as Goodword. Almost all of them are printed in pocket format and feature the same blue and white cover adorned with stylized tulip flowers, reminiscent of Ottoman non-figurative illumination. These small …
Over the last few years, the Saudi-based Rowad Translation Center (Markaz Rawwād al-Tarjama) has grown to become one of the biggest private publishers of Qur’an translations. It publishes translations into a number of languages and is the main caretaker of the multilingual website QuranEnc.com, one of the biggest sources of Qur’anic interpretations on the web. …
Qur’an translation of the week #165: The Rowad Translation Center – A Saudi Charity Read More »
Despite the fact that Mahmoud Ayoub (1935–2021) was a fairly renowned member of the Muslim community in North America, his translation of the Juzʾ ʿamma, the last of the thirty parts of the Qur’an, is virtually unknown and hard to obtain. It is a fascinating source for at least two reasons: first, because of its …
In May 2023, I came across an English Qur’an translation that appeared at first glance to be a reprint of an old work but, as is often the case, at second glance turned out to be much more than that. Right next to the entrance of the Ibn Tulun Mosque, one of the major Islamic …
Qur’an translation of the week #159: An Englishman’s translation in present-day Egypt Read More »
A guest contribution by Sheam Khan, University of Leicester Identifying the ideology of a Qur’an translator has rarely been more complex than in the case of The Sublime Quran and its translator, Laleh Bakhtiar, whose ideological positions are often paradoxical. There is a wealth of information available regarding her life and works, but the polarities …
On the Indian Ocean island of Mauritius, a dentist called Houssein Nahaboo (1920–2000) published Qur’an translations in no less than three languages – Mauritian Creole, French and English – during the 1980s. Through the lens of the small Muslim community of Mauritius in general, and Nahaboo’s work in particular, we can observe both the local …
This week we will take a closer look at ‘The Qur’an: The Eternal Revelation Vouchsafed to Muhammad,’ an English Qur’an translation authored by Sir Zafarullah Khan (d. 1985), who served as Pakistan’s first Foreign Minister. Sir Zafarullah Khan was born in 1893 in Sialkot where he attended primary school at the American Mission School. Receiving …
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 …
