Saudi Arabia

Qur’an translation of the week #142: An Emblem of an Epoch: The Russian Qur’an Translation by the Azerbaijani Scholar Elmir Quliyev

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 […]

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Qur’an translation of the week #141: Global publishers of Qur’an translations 4: the Saudi Arabian Tafsīr al-ʿUshr al-Akhīr project

            In contrast to other Saudi publishers, Tafsīr al-ʿ‘Ushr al-Akhīr project is dedicated solely to publishing Qur’an interpretations in a variety of languages, using a rather more ‘centralized’ exegetical approach than is the norm. Established by the Communities Awareness Society (al-Jamaʿaiyyah li-Taʾwiyyah al-Jāliyyāt)  in the Old Industrial City of the Saudi capital, Riyadh, the idea

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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 #138: Inspiration and plagiarism in translation: Cheikh Boureïma Abdou Daouda’s French Qur’an translation, published by Daroussalam

When does a translation draw inspiration from its predecessors and when is it plagiarized? The French Qur’an translation published by the private Saudi daʿwa-oriented publisher Daroussalam certainly raises this question. Compare these two translations of Q 100 (Sūrat al-ʿĀdiyāt): The one on the left was produced by Cheikh Boureïma Abdou Daouda from Niger and published

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Qur’an translation of the week #124: The Muslim World League as a Publisher of Qur’an translations

The Muslim World League (‘Rābiṭat al-ʿĀlam al-Islāmī’, MWL) officially came into being on December 15, 1962. This global Muslim organization, which has its headquarters in Mecca, remains one of the most influential transnational Islamic institutions and has realized many different goals, from the cultural and religious to the political. Fifty years on from its establishment,

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Qur’an translation of the week #103: ‘Interpretation of the meanings of the Noble Qur’an in the English language‘ by al-Hilālī and Khān- the story behind the first translation of the Qur’an in Saudi Arabia (2/2)

How does the early 1977 edition of the Hilali-Khan translation differs from later revisions? First of all, the English text of 1977 is almost completely free from the inclusion of Arabic glosses, i.e. transliterated Arabic words inserted in brackets, with only very few exceptions. Consider, for example, Q 2:43. In both the 1977 and 1978

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Qur’an translation of the week #98: Ibn Kathīr’s commentary as a source for a Qur’an translation into Bosnian

Since 1990, a large number of Arabic religious texts have been translated into Bosnian. When it comes to exegetical texts specifically, the appearance of a shortened version of Ibn Kathīr’s commentary in Bosnian in the mid-1990s was quite significant, and can be considered a mark of the rise of Salafism in the country which was,

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Qur’an translation of the week #63: Word for word translations in English

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

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Qur’an translation of the week #52: Friends, helpers, leaders, allies? Muslims, interreligious relations, and the translation of Q 5:51

In celebration of the one-year anniversary of ‘Qur’an Translation of the Week’, the GloQur team today jointly looks at modern translations of a contested verse. We will discuss Q 5:51, a verse that pertains to the relations between Muslims, on the one hand, and Christians and Jews, on the other hand. How is it rendered in

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Qur’an translation of the week #51: Following the Saudi Trend: A Translation of the Meaning of the Qur’an, Accompanied by Concise Interpretation, by Abu Adel.

This week we turn our attention to Koran: Perevod Smysla Ayatov i ih Kratkoe Tolkovanie (‘The Qur’an: A Translation of the Meaning of its Verses, Accompanied by Concise Interpretation’), a Russian Qur’an translation by a Tatar translator known by the teknonymic name Abu Adel. First published in 2008, it is already on its fourth edition.

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