India

Qur’an translation of the week #163: The first complete Ahmadi Urdu translation

Mīr Muḥammad Saʿīd (d. 1924) authored the first complete Ahmadi Urdu translation of the Qur’an, which was published in 1915 under the title Qurʾān Majīd Mutarjam: maʿa tafsīr awḍaḥ al-Qurʾān musammā bih tafsīr-i aḥmadī. Originating from Hyderabad, Mīr Muḥammad Saʿīd held the position of local chairman (amīr) within the Ahmadiyya movement. According to Ahmadi sources, […]

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Qur’an translation of the week #151: ‘The Qur’an’ – a Qur’an translation by Pakistan’s Foreign Minister

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

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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 #140: Anglo-Islamic Publishers Going Global: Darussalam International

A guest contribution by Azhar Majothi, University of Nottingham (azhar.majothi@nottingham.ac.uk) Darussalam International is one of the Muslim Anglosphere’s most recognisable brands in Islamic book publishing today. Since its establishment in Riyadh in 1986, the publisher claims to have printed more than 1,400 ‘authentic’ Islamic titles in various world languages. Despite the publisher’s achievements, little is

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Qur’an translation of the week #134: The First Muslim-Authored Qur’an Translation into German

This week we look at the first Muslim-authored translation into German, which was published during World War II by Maulana Sadr-ud-Din (d. 1981), a missionary of the Lahore branch of the Ahmadiyya movement, and caused much controversy within his community. Sadr-ud-Din, who had previously worked as a missionary in Woking in the United Kingdom, arrived

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Qur’an translation of the week #127: The First Ahmadi English Qur’an translation

In 1915, the Ahmadiyya Movement published the first part of The Holy Qur-ān with English Translation and Explanatory Notes, the first Ahmadi translation to be published in a European language. The Ahmadiyya Movement was the first Islamic group to begin translating the Qur’an into European languages, a project they initiated at the beginning of the

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Qur’an translation of the week #122: In defence of miracles- Badshah Husain’s Shi’i English Qur’an translation

In 1931, the Indian Shi’i activist A.F. Badshah Husain started publishing an English Qur’an translation ‘according to Shia traditions and principles.’ In this translation, which has to the best of our knowledge never been completed, Husain aimed to defend both the Qur’an and Imami Shi’i doctrines against British Orientalists, Islamic modernists and, in particular, the

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Qur’an translation of the week #114: Pioneering or “well-meaning but incompetent”?- Mirza Hairat Dihlavi’s 1916 English Qur’an translation

In 1916, Mirza Hairat Dihlavi (d. 1928), an intellectual and journalist from British India, printed an English Qur’an translation in three volumes. At the time, this was a pioneering endeavor. Mirza Hairat was the editor of a newspaper and had published on a wide range of subjects in Urdu before, including an introduction to Qur’anic

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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

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