France

Qur’an translation of the week #177: The quest for a ‘translation of the middle way’: AbdAllah Penot’s Le Coran (2005)

Some translations are known for their controversial choices. Others come across as ostensibly uncontroversial, which is precisely their point and their selling proposition: Addressing those many Muslim and non-Muslim readers that have no predetermined ideological expectation of a Qur’an translation, they strive to represent a ‘middle way’ and to avoid flagging any kind of sectarian […]

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Qur’an translation of the week #173: The Qur’an in Celtic languages

The Qur’an has been translated into dozens of languages, but there are many more languages in which no full translation is available. Examining partial, ongoing, unsuccessful or nonexistent attempts at translating the Qur’an into any given language can shed light on its present-day condition, its status in a specific region or country and the demographics

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Qur’an translation of the week #168: The Turkish afterlife of a global scholar: Muhammad Hamidullah’s French Qur’an translation in Turkish

Aziz Kur’an is a Turkish Qur’an translation based on Le Saint Coran by Muhammad Hamidullah. Producing such a translation of a translation is an unusual decision given that there are already dozens of Qur’an translations on the Turkish market from the original Arabic. It speaks to the renown and appeal of this illustrious and prolific

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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

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Qur’an translation of the week #123: The tolerant Qur’an- Dalil Boubakeur’s version of a ‘detheologized’ Qur’an

In 2008, the rector of the Grand Mosque of Paris, Dalil Boubakeur, published a small inexpensive booklet titled Le Coran tolérant (‘The Tolerant Qur’an’). It essentially contained a collection of verses from the Qur’an, translated into French and thematically arranged in four chapters and numerous subsections. Boubakeur is one of the most prominent figures of

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Qur’an translation of the week #119: Rachid Maach’s “Le Coran” and its two versions

Rachid Maach’s Le Coran is the most recent French Qur’an translation to appear in print. It is pioneering because it is probably the very first Qur’an translation to be published in two different versions which conform to two different reading traditions (qirāʾāt), those of Ḥafṣ ʿan ʿĀṣim and Warsh ʿan Nāfiʿ. Maach, a former journalist

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Qur’an translation of the week #101: Global da’wa in French and the gender question- Shahnaz Saïdi Benbetka’s French Qur’an translation, published by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan’s Goodword Books

The Indian scholar Maulana Wahiduddin Khan (1925–2021) was the founder of a global da’wah enterprise that focuses on the distribution of Qur’an translations. We discussed his English Qur’an translation (which was co-authored with, and probably mostly produced by, his daughter Farida Khanam on the basis of his Urdu translation) last week. Khan was a madrasa-trained

Qur’an translation of the week #101: Global da’wa in French and the gender question- Shahnaz Saïdi Benbetka’s French Qur’an translation, published by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan’s Goodword Books Read More »

Qur’an translation of the week #90: Arabic roots and Qur’anic meanings – Maurice Gloton’s Le Coran: Essai de traduction et annotations

Why yet another French Qur’an translation? ‘To further explore the richness and depth of the Qur’an’s Arabic vocabulary’ is the answer that Maurice Gloton (1926–2017) might have given. The astonishing outcome of his endeavour is a ‘literal translation’ that is so serious about identifying the literal meaning of Qur’anic terms that most Muslim readers would

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Qur’an translation of the week #85: ‘The preeminent reading’ – ‘Lecture par excellence’: The first Muslim Qur’an translation into French

This week, we present the first Muslim Qur’an translation into French, after having discussed its English equivalent last week. Both efforts had their origin in the colonial period, but there were notable differences between the contexts of the French-ruled Maghreb and British India. Before addressing them, let us take a closer look at ‘Le Coran,’

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Qur’an translation of the week #80: A Tunisian translator’s Qur’an with a French artist’s illuminations- Ameur Ghedira’s Le Coran (Lyon 1957)

In 1957, Ameur Ghedira (1926–?), Lecturer of Arabic at the University of Lyon, France, published a new Qur’an translation with illuminations by the French painter and illustrator Jean Gradassi (1907–1981). The edition was printed by a local publisher on vellum paper with a print run of 607 copies, including a number of particularly prestigious collectors’

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