Ottoman Empire

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 #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 #94: “In the darkest hours of night Thou flashest the light”- Nejmi Sagib Bodamialisade’s “The Gouran Versified” and Muslims in British Cyprus

Qur’an translation as propaganda: war alliances and nation-building (2/3) In the period between the two world wars, Nejmi Sagib Bodamialisade (1897–1964), a Muslim in Cyprus, an oft-forgotten corner of the British Empire, started translating the Qur’an into English verse in order to gain British support for Muslim Cypriot interests. His translations of segments of the …

Qur’an translation of the week #94: “In the darkest hours of night Thou flashest the light”- Nejmi Sagib Bodamialisade’s “The Gouran Versified” and Muslims in British Cyprus 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 »

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