South Asia

Qur’an translation of the week #97: Tafsīr-i Uthmānī – ‘Restoring’ an old translation

What do you do when the language of a Qur’an translation becomes outdated, but you still want readers to benefit from the work?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 …

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Qur’an translation of the week #59: The first complete verbatim Urdu Qur’an translation

In previous posts (QTOTW 39 and 46), we have introduced the Persian Qur’an translation authored by Shāh Walī Allāh Dihlawī (1703–1762), and his son Shāh ʿAbd al-Qādir Dihlawī’s Urdu translation, both of which had a huge impact on subsequent Qur’an translations produced in the Indian subcontinent during the nineteenth century. Father and son both opted …

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Qur’an translation of the week #53: Nazir Ahmad’s Urdu Qur’an translation

In the second half of the nineteenth century, the Indian subcontinent witnessed a significant increase in the production of Qurʾan translations into vernacular languages. The continuing rise in literacy rates, accompanied by falling printing costs, enabled more people to engage with the Qur’an and explore its meanings at an individual level. This, in turn, created …

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