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 »
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 …
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 …
What do you do when the language of a Qur’an translation becomes outdated, but you still want readers to benefit from the work? One answer is provided by Maḥmūd Ḥasan’s Urdu Qur’an translation, which was later included in the Tafsīr-i Uthmānī. Maḥmūd Ḥasan (d. 1920), who became later known as ‘Shaykh al-Hind’, was born in …
Qur’an translation of the week #97: Tafsīr-i Uthmānī – ‘Restoring’ an old translation Read More »
What role does modern science play in our understanding of the Qur’an? This week we will look at the Urdu translation/exegesis of Sayyid Ahmad Khan (d. 1898), who tried to bridge the gap between ancient Islamic tradition and modern science. Sayyid Ahmad Khan was born in Delhi in 1817 into an Ashraf family. After the …
This week’s post concerns the phenomenon of “word for word” translations in English, with a look at some examples along with the translators’ introductions. Interlinear verbatim translations have a long history, and work more naturally in languages with shared vocabulary and structure with Arabic. A three-volume work first published in 1995 by the Islamic Book …
Qur’an translation of the week #63: Word for word translations in English Read More »
This week we look at the highly original and influential work by the rationally-inclined Muhammad Asad: “The Message of the Qur’an”. Born Leopold Weiss in 1900 in Austria-Hungary (modern-day Lviv, Ukraine), he became Muslim in 1926. As he recounts in his autobiography “The Road to Mecca”, a Qur’an translation played an important role in his …
Qur’an translation of the week #06: “The Message of the Qur’an” by Muhammad Asad Read More »
