Gone seem to be the days in which it was hip for a Muslim translator to name their work something along the lines of ‘A Probably Failed Attempt at Translating Some of the Approximate Meanings of the Verses of the Holy Qur’an into English’. #qurantranslationoftheweek Instead, when one browses websites or Islamic bookshops for English Qur’an translations today, the number of recent translations that claim to be ‘clear’, ‘easy’, ‘simple’, ‘plain’, or all of those things at once, is striking.

In 1985, T.B. (Thomas Ballantyne) Irving, also known as al-Hajj Ta‘lim ‘Ali (1914–2002), published a book entitled ‘The Qur’an: The First American Version’. #qurantranslationoftheweek

Printed with funding from global donors, including a major halal food business that Levantine Muslim migrants had founded in the American Midwest, its publication was part of a globalizing trend.

In 🇪🇬 Egypt 🇪🇬 in May 2023, I came across an English Qur’an translation that appeared at first glance to be a reprint of an old work but, as is often the case, at second glance turned out to be much more than that. #qurantranslationoftheweek Right next to the entrance of the Ibn Tulun Mosque, one of the major Islamic tourist sites of Cairo, stood a big shelf that offered ‘free Islamic books’ in a variety of languages.

In 1999, al-Azhar University in 🇪🇬 Egypt published the 🇩🇪 German version of its project to standardize Qur’an translation. Has it succeeded in combining the promotion of al-Azhar’s theological doctrine with its claim to being non-divisive? #qurantranslationoftheweek Like the versions in other languages (for English and Russian, see gloqur.de/quran-translat… and gloqur.de/quran-translat…), this German Qur’an translation was based on the concise Qur’an commentary

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 Ahmadiyya movement, and caused much controversy within his community. #qurantranslationoftheweek Sadr-ud-Din, who had previously worked as a missionary in Woking, arrived in Berlin in 1923 to promote the spread of Islam there. In 1925, he acquired a plot of land for a mosque, following which the Wilmersdorfer Moschee, the oldest mosque still standing in Germany, was built.

In another attempt to provide an 'accurate' translation of the Qur’an into Russian, the Sharipovs, two Tatar Islamicists from an academic background, published the first edition of their translation in 2009 and the second edition in 2012. #qurantranslationoftheweek 'Koran: Perevod na russkiĭ i͡azyk' by Ural Sharipov and Raisa Sharipova is associated with the Russian Academy of Sciences Institute of Oriental Studies (Iv Ran) and is intended to be useful for both an academic readership and the general public.

In 1915, the Ahmadiyya Movement published the first part of ‘The Holy Qur-ān with English Translation and Explanatory Notes’, the first Ahmadi translation to be published in a European language. #qurantranslationoftheweek The Ahmadiyya Movement was the first Islamic group to begin translating the Qur’an into European languages, a project they initiated at the beginning of the twentieth century. Since then, the Ahmadiyya has published more than 80 translations in different languages.

The issue of Qur’anic translatability was still a subject of debate during the 1930s in the Middle East, but some European Muslims did not regard this as a problem at all (even for the English language) – including Jakub Szynkiewicz (1884–1966). #qurantranslationoftheweek The works of Szynkiewicz, a Muslim and Orientalist scholar who served as mufti of Poland, are a good example of a contribution to the translation movement made by an outstanding personality.

So, what did we learn in our very first in-person workshop which exceeded all our expectations a million times? A 🧵 with a subjective selection of some results. In the late Ottoman Empire, concise Qur'an commentaries – esp. Tibyān & Mawākib – became popular because they could function as translations without technically being translations and thereby circumvented the ulemas' disapproval of Qur'an translations. (Oğuzhan Tan, Ankara)

In the early 2000s, the 🇹🇷Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs (TDRA, usually known as ‘Diyanet’) expanded its publication of translations of the Qur’an by, for the first time, adding Turkish to the many languages it had previously focused on. After the 1st modern ‘institutional’ TDRA translation into Turkish was published in 2001 (‘Kur’an-i Kerim Meali’ by Halil Altuntaş & Muzaffer Şahin), another project was successfully realized: ‘Kur'an Yolu Türkçe Meal ve Tefsir’ (‘The Path of the Qur’an: Translation and tafsīr’).

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). #qurantranslationoftheweek 🇪🇬🇷🇺 🌏 This publication not only received official approval from Egypt’s al-Azhar University (which has a widespread policy of providing official sanction for translations it endorses), but was directly published through the Egyptian Ministry of Awqāf (‘endowments’).

The popular translation of the Qur’an into English widely known as ‘Hilali-Khan’ is one of the most influential Islamic texts in the world. 🌍🌎🌏 #qurantranslationoftheweek Published in numerous editions, it gained much of its fame in the late 1990s and early 2000s, while recently it has been criticized on various grounds, some more controversial than others.

Shahnaz Saïdi Benbetka’s 🇫🇷 French Qur’an translation, published by Maulana Wahiduddin Khan’s Goodword Books, is a prime example of 🌏 global da’wa with an at least partially feminist angle. #qurantranslationoftheweek Khan (1925–2021), an Indian scholar, was the founder of a Goodword Books, which focuses on the distribution of Qur’an translations.

In the 2nd installment of our series on Qur’an translation as propaganda, we will look at Nejmi Sagib Bodamialisade (1897–1964), a Muslim in Cyprus, an oft-forgotten corner of the British Empire. #qurantranslationoftheweek In the period between the two world wars, Nejmi Sagib (or in later Turkish Spelling Necmi Sagıp) started translating the Qur’an into English verse in order to gain British support for Muslim Cypriot interests.

The first instalment of our three-part series on “Qur’an translation as propaganda” is devoted to Mahmud Mukhtar Pasha, the Ottoman Ambassador in Berlin, who used Qur’an translation to foster the German-Ottoman alliance in the First World War. #qurantranslationoftheweek

https://twitter.com/GloQur/status/1496217834791264256

The Ottoman Empire had entered the 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.

The translator in this week’s thread is very much a household name for readers of the Qur’an in English, but what are the roots of that popularity? And who is the man behind the name: Abdullah Yusuf Ali?
#qurantranslationoftheweek 🌏🇮🇳🇵🇰🇬🇧 It is commonly stated that Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s “The Holy Qur’an” has been printed more than any other in English, and is most sought after. One site provides an indicative graph that may support this claim:
quranyusufali.com/what-is-the-mo…

Is God’s scripture alone enough to provide sufficient guidance to believers? This week’s thread is about a recent Quranist Qur’an translation into Russian, made in Kazakhstan. #qurantranslationoftheweek 🇰🇿🌏 The general answer across the Abrahamic faiths has been ‘no’, however the tendency to eschew the intermediation of religious scholars and clergy and focus solely on scripture has been represented by various religious movements throughout history.

🇿🇦 The history of the first Afrikaans Qur’an translation throws a spotlight on the afterlives of slavery in South Africa, the international movement of texts and ideas in the twentieth century, and the disruption caused by the apartheid regime. #qurantranslationoftheweek 🇿🇦 ‘Die Heilige Qur’ān’ by Imam Mohammed Armien Baker (1910–1982) was first published in 1961 in Cape Town. Baker was the imam of the Noorul Islam Mosque in Simon’s Town (Afrikaans: Simonstad), a naval settlement near Cape Town, and also principal of the Muslim primary school.

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. #qurantranslationoftheweek Sayyid Ahmad Khan was born in Delhi in 1817 into an Ashraf family. After the death of his father, he decided to work for the British, becoming part of the colonial legal administration.

Today, in the 70th installment of "Qur'an translation of the week", we discuss an Uyghur translation of the Qur'an. 🌏 #qurantranslationoftheweek 🌏 The history of Qur’an interpretation in Eastern Turkic areas has its roots in the medieval era while Qur’an translations, in the modern sense of independent books containing the translated text of the Qur’an, have appeared only recently.

Recently, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Jamaat has published a new revised German translation of the Qur’an titled ‘Der Heilige Qur’an’. In this post, I will take a close look at this new edition and discuss some of the things that have been changed. #qurantranslationoftheweek 🌍🇩🇪 The Ahmadiyya Movement has been translating the Qur’an into different languages for more than 100 years, with the goal of making the meaning of the Qur’an accessible in all languages of the world.