In 2022, a new Qur’an translation into Russian entitled Salsabil: Perevod Smyslov Velikogo Korana Tom I (‘Salsabil: A Translation of the Meanings of the Great Qur’an. Part I’) was published with a curious addendum on the cover page, to the effect that the translation is an ‘experimental edition.’ Aslan Arkhestov, also known as Shaykh Abu …
If an ordinary Muslim for whom Russian is the mother tongue were asked today to recite Sūrat al-Fātiḥa from memory, it is very likely that their recitation would be based on Elmir Quliyev’s translation of the Qur’an. The ubiquitous presence of this Qur’an translation in print and online apps, and on peoples’ tongues, reflects the …
This week our attention is focused on another attempt to translate the Qur’an into Russian by translators from an academic background. Two Tatar Islamicists, Ural Sharipov (b. 1937) and Raisa Sharipova (b. 1940), published the first edition of their translation in 2009, and the second edition in 2012. Koran: Perevod na russkiĭ i͡azyk is associated …
The geography of the former Russian Empire and the power of its language have had lasting effects, not only on geopolitics but also on the grassroots level activities of various actors. Our thread today is about how Muslims have used the Russian language and the geography of the Empire to create a Qur’an translation and …
This week we present one of the very first tafsīr translations into Russian to be published after the official collapse of the USSR. ‘Tafsīr Hilal’ (Hilol), by Shaykh Muhammad Sodiq Muhammad Yusuf (d. 2015), was originally written in Uzbek and has been both partially and fully translated into some of the languages of the region. …
by Elmira Akhmetova The earliest printed Tatar commentaries of the Qur’an produced within the Russian Empire date back to the nineteenth century. In 1861, the first Tatar interpretation of the seventh part of the Qur’an, entitled Haftiyak Sharif (from the Persian haft, or ‘seven’) and authored by a prominent Tatar Muslim theologian and reformer, ʿAbd …
The turn of the millennium gifted Russian-speaking Muslim communities with a new Qur’an interpretation: al-Muntakhab: Tolkovanie Svi͡ashchennogo Korana na Arabskom i Russkom I͡azykakh (2000) [al-Muntakhab: Interpretation of the Holy Qur’an in Arabic and Russian languages]. This publication not only received official approval from Egypt’s al-Azhar University (which has a widespread policy of providing official sanction …
Qur’an translations tend to be categorized in various different ways, but one of the most common means of categorization relates to perceptions of the translator and the style of the translation. Accordingly, Qur’an translations can be put into several categories, such as academic or confessional, humanistic or ‘fundamentalist’, poetic or non-poetic, or ‘traditional’ or ‘modernist’. …
This week’s post addresses Ozarenie ot znayuschego, sveduyuschego [Озарение от Знающего, Сведующего], a Russian translation of Fatḥ al ʿalīm al khabīr bi-tafsīr ‘al-juzʾ al-akhīr’, a tafsīr on the last juzʾ of the Qur’an by the Yemeni preacher Muḥammad ibn ʿAbdallāh Bājammāl. The translation is by a prolific Tatar preacher and translator known by the teknonymic name …
The Avar language (originally known as ‘Magarul mac’) belongs to the subgroup of Avar–Andic languages and is currently spoken by more than a million people in Russia (in western Dagestan), Azerbaijan (in the Zaqatala region), and Georgia. The oldest texts written in Avar date back to the fifteenth century and the language has survived a …
