French

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 …

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

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 #93: The Qur’an as a weapon in the Great War – Mahmud Mukhtar Pasha and the German-Ottoman alliance

Qur’an translation as propaganda: war alliances and nation-building (1/3) When the Ottoman Empire entered the First World War in November 1914 on the side of Germany and Austria-Hungary, pro-Ottoman circles in Germany were eager to sell this new alliance to a German-speaking public that was under the influence of decades of discourses on Oriental despotism …

Qur’an translation of the week #93: The Qur’an as a weapon in the Great War – Mahmud Mukhtar Pasha and the German-Ottoman alliance 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 …

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

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,’ …

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

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’ …

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) Read More »

Qur’an translation of the week #74: A French law professor and a native interpreter: a Qur’an translation from colonial-era France

Le Coran by Octave Pesle and Ahmed Tidjani, first published in Paris in 1936, was a product of the colonial era when France held sway over much of the Maghreb. One of the authors of this Qur’an translation, Tidjani (1875–1982), was an Algerian Muslim legal scholar who first worked as a qadi in Algiers and …

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Qur’an translation of the week #68: Islamicising a non-Muslim’s Qur’an translation: From Paris to Beirut (and back?)

Today’s post discusses a Lebanese publisher’s attempt to bridge the divide between non-Muslim and Muslim French Qur’an translations by editing and repackaging the Qur’an translation by Denise Masson (1902–1994) for a Muslim audience. That such a divide exists is true of most European book markets. On one side of the divide, we find mainstream publishers …

Qur’an translation of the week #68: Islamicising a non-Muslim’s Qur’an translation: From Paris to Beirut (and back?) Read More »

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 …

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 Read More »