The first rendering of the Koran into a western language was made by the English scholar Robertus Retenensis in the twelfth century, at the instance of Peter the Venerable, Abbot of Cluny; it was completed in 1143, and enjoyed a considerable circulation in man*script. Exactly four centuries later this mediaeval Latin version was punished at Basle, the editor being Theodor Bibliander (Buchmann) of Zurich. It abounds in inaccuracies and misunderstandings, and was inspired by hostile intention; nevertheless it served as the foundation of the earliest translations into modem European idioms.
In 1647 Andre du Ryer, a gentleman of France trading in the Levant, published a French translation which took matters little farther. Two years later an English version of this appeared, with the following curious title-page
'The Alcoran of Mahomet, Translated out of Arabick into French. By the Sieur du Ryer, Lord of Malezair, and Resident for the French King, at ALEXANDRIA. And Newly Englished, for the satisfaction of all that desire to look into the Turkish Vanities. To which is prefixed, the Life of Mahomet, the Prophet of the Turks, and Author of the Alcoran. With a Needful Caveat, or Admonition, for them who desire to know what Use may be made of, or if there be danger in Reading the ALCORAN.'
Such was the somewhat inglorious beginning of the English interpretation of the Holy Book of Islam. A quotation or two from the translator's address to the Christian Reader will help to illustrate the spirit in which this version was offered:
'There being so many Sects and Heresies banded together against the Truth, finding that of Mahomet wanting to the Muster, I thought good to bring it to their Colours, that so viewing thine enemies in their full body, thou maist the better prepare to encounter, and I hope overcome them. It may happily startle thee, to find him so to speak English, as if he had made some Conquest on the Nation; but thou wilt soon reject that fear, if thou consider that this his Alcoran (the Ground-work of the Turkish Religion), hath been already translated into almost all Languages in Christendom (at least, the most general, as the Latin, Italian, French, etc.), yet never gained any Proselyte, where the Sword, its most forcible, and strongest argument hath not prevailed. . . Thou shalt find it of so rude, and incongruous a composure, so farced with contradictions, blasphemies, obscene speeches, and ridiculous fables, that some modest, and more rational Mahometans have thus excused it; that their Prophet wrote an hundred and twenty thousand sayings, whereof three thousand only are good, the residue (as the impossibility of the Moons falling into his sleeve, the Conversion and Salvation of the Devils, and the like) are false and ridiculous. Yet is the whole esteemed so sacred, that upon the Cover thereof is inscribed -- Let none touch it but he who is clean. Nor are the vulgar permitted to read it, but live and die in an implicite faith of what their Priests deliver. . . . Therefore (Christian Reader) though some, conscious of their own instability in Religion, and of theirs (too like Turks in this) whose prosperity and opinions they follow, were unwilling this should see the Press, yet am I confident, if thou hast been so true a votary to orthodox Religion, as to keep thy self untainted of their follies, this shall not hurt thee; And as for those of that Batch, having once abandoned the Sun of the Gospel, I believe they will wander as far into utter darkness, by following strange lights, as by this Ignis Fatuus of the Alcoran. Such as it is, I present it to thee, having taken the pains only to translate it out of French, not doubting, though it hath been a poyson, that hath infected a very great, but most unsound part of the Universe, it may prove an Antidote, to confirm in thee the health of Christianity.'
Such being the translator's estimate of the merits of the Koran, it is hardly surprising that his version is very far from perfect. For instance, this is what he made of the pa**age (Sura XII, 23-29) telling of the temptation of Joseph by Potiphar's wife:
'His Masters Wife became amorous of his Beauty, she one day shut him into her Chamber, and solicited him with love; God defend me (said he) to betray my Master, and be unchaste (he was in the number of the righteous) and fled to the Door; his Mistress ran after him, and to stay him, tore his Shirt through the back: She met her Husband behind the Door, to whom she said, what other thing doth he merit, who would dishonour thine house, than to be imprisoned, and severely chastised? Lord, said Joseph, she sollicited me, that Infant which is in the Cradle, and of thy Parentage shall be witness: Then the Infant in the Cradle said, if Joseph's Shirt be torn before, she hath spoken truth, and Joseph is a lyar; if the Shirt be rent behind, Joseph hath delivered the truth, and she a lyar: then her Husband beheld Joseph's Shirt torn behind, and knew that it was extream malice, and said to Joseph, take heed to thy self, and beware this act be not divulged, do thou, speaking to his Wife, implore pardon for thy fault, thou art truly guilty.'
A second specimen is this rendering of the beautiful account of the birth of Jesus (Sura XIX, 16-34):
'Remember thou what is written of Mary, she retired towards the East, into a place far remote from her Kindred, and took a Vail to cover her, we sent her our Spirit in form of a man; she was afraid, and said, God will preserve me from thee, if thou have his fear before thine eyes; he said, Oh Mary! I am the Messenger of God thy Lord, who shall give thee a Son, active, and prudent: She answered, How shall I have a Son without the touch of man? I desire not to be unchaste; he said, The thing shall be as I have told thee, it is facile to thy Lord; thy Son shall be a token of the Omnipotency of God, and of his special grace towards such as shall believe in his Divine Majesty; she became with Child, and retired some time into a place remote from People, where she sustained the dolours of Child-birth, at the foot of a Date-tree, and said, Why am I not dead? Wherefore am I not in the number of persons forgotten? The Angel said to her, Afflict not thy self; God hath placed a brook under thee, shake the foot of this Palm, and the Dates shall fall, gather them up, eat and drink, and wash thine eyes; say unto them that thou shall meet, that thou fastest, and hast made a Vow not to speak to any one, until the fast be accomplished. Her Parents met her while she bare the Infant, and said unto her, Oh Mary! behold a strange thing; Oh Sister of Aaron! thy Father did not command thee to do evil, neither was thy Mother unchaste; she made signs to her Infant to answer them; they said, How shall the Infant in the Cradle speak? Then her infant spake, and said, I am the Servant of God, he hath taught me the Scripture, hath made me a Prophet, blessed me in all places, and commanded me to pray unto him; he hath recommended to me purity through the whole course of my life, and to honour my Father and Mother; he hath not made me either violent or malicious, praised shall be the day of my birth, the day that I shall die, and the day of my resurrection.'
Such was the version of the Koran with which the English public had to be content for nearly a century; and it is small wonder that they were not impressed. Meanwhile in 1694 the Arabic text of the Koran was at last printed and published in full at Hamburg under the careful editorship of Abraham Hinckelmann. This edition was available to the worthy lawyer George Sale, when he set himself the task of replacing Alexander Ross's translation of Du Ryer; he also had at his disposal a new Latin rendering made by Father Maracci, which appeared at Padua in 1698. Though Sale approached his labour better qualified and better supplied than his predecessor, he was not troubled by motives of scholarly impartiality. He states his position clearly enough in the first pages of his justly celebrated version, first published in 1784 and reprinted many times since:
'I imagine it almost needless either to make an apology for publishing the following translation, or to go about to prove it a work of use as well as curiosity. They must have a mean opinion of the Christian religion, or be but ill grounded therein, who can apprehend any danger from so manifest a forgery. . . . I shall not here inquire into the reasons why the law of Mohammed has met with so unexampled a reception in the world (for they are greatly deceived who imagine it to have been propagated by the sword alone), or by what means it came to be embraced by nations which never felt the force of the Mohammedan arms, and even by those which stripped the Arabians of their conquests, and put an end to the sovereignty and very being of their Khalifs: yet it seems as if there was something more than what is vulgarly imagined in a religion which has made so surprising a progress. But whatever use an impartial version of the Koran may be of in other respects, it is absolutely necessary to undeceive those who, from the ignorant or unfair translations which have appeared; have entertained too favourable an opinion of the original, and also to enable us effectually to expose the imposture. . . . The writers of the Romish communion; in particular, are so far from having done any service in their refutations of Mohammedanism, that by endeavouring to defend their idolatry and other superstitions, they have rather contributed to the increase of that aversion which the Mohammedans in general have to the Christian religion, and given them great advantages in the dispute. The Protestants alone are able to attack the Koran with success; and for them, I trust, Providence has reserved the glory of its overthrow.
Sale's translation was not supplanted for some 150 years. Its influence was thus enormous; this was the Koran for all English readers almost to the end of the nineteenth century; many even now living have never looked into any other version. No other rendering was in the hands of Edward Gibbon when he wrote:
'In the spirit of enthusiasm or vanity, the prophet rests the truth of his mission on the merit of his book; audaciously challenges both men and angels to imitate the beauties of a single page; and presumes to a**ert that God alone could dictate this incomparable performance. This argument is most powerfully addressed to a devout Arabian, whose mind is attuned to faith and rapture; whose ear is delighted by the music of sounds; and whose ignorance is incapable of comparing the productions of human genius. The harmony and copiousness of style will not reach, in a version, the European infidel: he will peruse with impatience the endless incoherent rhapsody of fable, and precept, and declamation, which seldom excites a sentiment or an idea, which sometimes crawls in the dust, and is sometimes lost in the clouds. The divine attributes exalt the fancy of the Arabian missionary; but his loftiest strains must yield to the sublime simplicity of the book of Job, composed in a remote age, in the same country, and in the same language. If the composition of the Koran exceeds the faculties of a man, to what superior intelligence should we ascribe the Iliad of Homer, or the Philippics of Demosthenes?' It was on the basis of Sale's version that Thomas Carlyle commented: 'It is as toilsome reading as I ever undertook, a wearisome, confused jumble, crude, incondite. Nothing but a sense of duty could carry any European through the Koran.' And Gibbon and Carlyle were in their times remarkable for the liberality of their attitude towards Islam.
Yet the superiority of Sale to Ross is evident in every line; not only had he a good grasp of the Arabic language, which his forerunner lacked totally, but his English style is more elegant and mature. The incident of Joseph and Potiphar's wife is rendered thus by Sale:
'And she, in whose house he was, desired him to lie with her; and she shut the doors and said, Come hither. He answered, God forbid! verily my lord hath made my dwelling with him easy; and the ungrateful shall not prosper. But she resolved within herself to enjoy him, and he would have resolved to enjoy her, had he not seen the evident demonstration of his Lord. So we turned away evil and filthiness from him, because he was one of our sincere servants. And they ran to get one before the other to the door; and she rent his inner garment behind. And they met her lord at the door. She said, What shall be the reward of him who seeketh to commit evil in thy family, but imprisonment, and a painful punishment? And Joseph said, She asked me to lie with her. And a witness of her family bore witness; saying, If his garment be rent before, she speaketh truth, and he is a liar; but if his garment be rent behind, she lieth, and he is a speaker of truth. And when her husband saw that his garment was torn behind, he said, This is a cunning contrivance of your s**; for surely your cunning is great. O Joseph, take no farther notice of this affair: and thou, O woman, ask pardon for thy crime, for thou art a guilty person.
This is how Sale translates the story of the Nativity, his carefully italicized 'supplies' being intentionally reminiscent of the Authorized Version of the Bible:
'And remember in the book of the Koran the story of Mary; when she retired from her family to a place towards the east, and took a veil to conceal herself from them; and we sent our spirit Gabriel unto her, and he appeared unto her in the shape of a perfect man. She said, I fly for refuge unto the merciful God, that he may defend me from thee: if thou fearest him, thou wilt not approach me. He answered, Verily I am the messenger of thy Lord, and am sent to give thee a holy son. She said, How shall I have a son, seeing a man hath not touched me, and I am no harlot? Gabriel replied, So shall it be: thy Lord saith, This is easy with me; and we will perform it, that we may ordain him a sign unto men, and a mercy from us: for it is a thing which is decreed. Wherefore she conceived him: and she retired aside with him in her womb to a distant place; and the pains of childbirth came upon her near the trunk of a palm-tree. She said, Would to God I had died before this, and had become a thing forgotten, and lost in oblivion! And he who was beneath her called to her, saying, Be not grieved: now hath God provided a rivulet under thee; and do thou shake the body of the palm-tree, and it shall let fall ripe dates upon thee, ready gathered. And eat, and drink, and calm thy mind. Moreover if thou see any man, and he question thee, say, Verily, I have vowed a fast unto the Merciful; wherefore I will by no means speak to a man this day. So she brought the child to her people, carrying him in her arms. And they said unto her, O Mary, now hast thou done a strange thing: O sister of Aaron, thy father was not a bad man, neither was thy mother a harlot. But she made signs unto the child to answer them; and they said, How shall we speak to him, who is an infant in the cradle? Whereupon the child said, Verily I am the servant of God; he hath given me the book of the gospel, and hath appointed me a prophet. And he hath made me blessed, wheresoever I shall be; and hath commanded me to observe prayer, and to give alms, so long as I shall live; and he hath made me dutiful towards my mother, and hath not made me proud, or unhappy. And peace be on me the day whereon I was born, and the day whereon I shall die, and the day whereon I shall be raised to life.'
Such was the voice of the Koran to eighteenth century England; a somewhat monotonous and humdrum voice, it may be thought, but at least an honest voice. So matters remained for well over a hundred years. But with the nineteenth century came the rise of oriental studies in the scientific meaning of the term; and the interpretation of the Koran inevitably engaged the interest of scholars eager to apply the methods of the higher criticism to this as yet virgin field of research. Thus it came to pa** that in the next translation of the Koran to appear, the work of the Rev J. M. Rodwell, the order of the Suras -- the chapters of which the Koran is composed -- was completely changed, with the object of reconstituting the historical sequence of its original composition. Rodwell gives the following justification of this somewhat arbitrary procedure:
'The arrangement of the Suras in this translation is based partly upon the traditions of the Muhammadans themselves, with reference especially to the ancient chronological list printed by Weil in his Mohammed der Prophet, as well as upon a careful consideration of the subject matter of each separate Sura and its probable connection with the sequence of events in the life of Muhammad. Great attention has been paid to this subject by Dr Weil in the work just mentioned; by Mr Muir in his Life of Mahomet, who also publishes a chronological list of Suras, 21 however of which he admits have "not yet been carefully fixed"; and especially by Noeldeke, in his Geschichte des Qorans, a work to which public honours were awarded in 1859 by the Paris Academy of Inscriptions. From the arrangement of this author I see no reason to depart in regard to the later Suras. It is based upon a searching criticism and minute an*lysis of the component verses of each, and may be safely taken as a standard, which ought not to be departed from without weighty reasons.
The result is that in order to find a particular Sura in Rodwell's version, first published in 1861 and taken up by Everyman's Library in 1909, it is necessary first to consult a comparative table of contents, a laborious and irritating preliminary. Since this translation has enjoyed a very wide circulation indeed, and has been regarded by many as the standard English version, it is interesting to consider the spirit that animated its author. It is a far cry indeed from the intolerant hostility of the seventeenth century, the urbane superiority of the eighteenth.
Certainly Rodwell does not doubt that the Koran was the product of Muhammad's own imagination; but his estimate of Muhammad's character is not lacking in charity and even admiration:
'In close connection with the above remarks, stands the question of Muhammad's sincerity and honesty of purpose in coming forward as a messenger from God. For if he was indeed the illiterate person the m**ms represent him to have been, then it will be hard to escape their inference that the Koran is, as they a**ert it to be, a standing miracle. But if; on the other hand, it was a Book carefully concocted from various sources, and with much extraneous aid, and published as a divine oracle, then it would seem that the author is at once open to the charge of the grossest imposture, and even of impious blasphemy. The evidence rather shews, that in all he did and wrote, Muhammed was actuated by a sincere desire to deliver his countrymen from the grossness of its debasing idolatries -- that he was urged on by an intense desire to proclaim that great truth of the Unity of the Godhead which had taken full possession of his own soul -- that the end to be attained justified to his mind the means he adopted in the production of his Suras -- that he worked himself up into a belief that he had received a divine call -- and that he was carried on by the force of circumstances, and by gradually increasing successes, to believe himself the accredited messenger of Heaven. The earnestness of those convictions which at Mecca sustained him under persecution, and which perhaps led him, at any price as it were, and by any means, not even excluding deceit and' falsehood, to endeavour to rescue his countrymen from idolatry, -- naturally stiffened at Medina into tyranny and unscrupulous violence. At the same time, he was probably, more or less, throughout his whole career, the victim of a certain amount of self-deception. A cataleptic subject from his early youth, born -- according to the traditions -- of a highly nervous and excitable mother, he would be peculiarly liable to morbid and fantastic hallucinations, and alternations of excitement and depression, which would win for him, in the eyes of his ignorant countrymen, the credit of being inspired. . . . Still, Muhammad's career is a wonderful instance of the force and life that resides in him who possesses an intense Faith in God and in the unseen world; and whatever deductions may be made -- and they are many and serious -- from the noble and truthful in his character, he will always be regarded as one of those who have had that influence over the faith, morals, and whole earthly life of their fellow-men, which none but a really great man ever did, or can, exercise; and as one of those, whose efforts to propagate some great verity will prosper, in spite of manifold personal errors and defects, both of principle and character. The more insight we obtain, from undoubted historical sources, into the actual character of Muhammad, the less reason do we find to justify the strong vituperative language poured out upon his head by 'Maracci, Prideaux, and others, in recent days, one of whom has found, in the Byzantine "Maometis", the number of the Beast! It is nearer to the truth to say that he was a great though imperfect character, an earnest though mistaken teacher, and that many of his mistakes and imperfections were the result of circumstances, of temperament, and constitution; and that there must be elements both of truth and goodness in the system of which he was the main author, to account for the world-wide phenomenon, that whatever may be the intellectual inferiority (if such is, indeed, the fact) of the m**m races, the influence of his teaching, aided, it is true, by the vast impulse given to it by the victorious arms of his followers, has now lasted for nearly thirteen centuries, and embraces more than one hundred millions of our race -- more than one-tenth part of the inhabitants of the globe.'
Nearly a hundred years have gone by since Rodwell wrote these words. In the interval the further spread of Islam has been so considerable, and the growth in the world's population has been so rapid, that the figures generally accepted nowadays are between three and four times those he estimated, and the proportion of m**ms is thought to have reached one-seventh; though such statistics are surely unreal, seeing that they embrace men, women and children and a**ume a hundred per cent allegiance to Islam in the communities claimed for that faith.
Whereas Sale had had Hinckelmann and Maracci on his worktable, Rodwell was able to use the Leipzig 1841 text of the Koran edited by Gustav Fluegel. He criticized Sale for having followed Maracci too closely, 'especially by introducing his paraphrastic comments into the body of the text'; he followed the growing fashion of his mid-Victorian times by deploring 'his constant use of Latinized instead of Saxon words'. Rodwell was concerned -- and he was the first English translator so to be preoccupied --'with attempting in some degree to imitate the style of the Arabic original. 'The more brief and poetical verses of the earlier Suras are translated with a freedom from which I have altogether abstained in the historical and prosaic portions; but I have endeavoured nowhere to use a greater amount of paraphrase than is necessary to convey the sense.'. . . I have nowhere attempted to represent the rhymes of the original. The "Proben" of H. v. Purgstall, in the Fundgruben des Orients, excellent as they are in many respects, shew that this can only be done 'with a sacrifice of literal translation.'
G. Margoliouth, who edited Rodwell's translation for Everyman's Library, was much taken by its merits, which are indeed considerable. 'One is happy to be able to say that Rodwell's rendering is one of the best that have as yet been produced. It seems to a great extent to carry with it the atmosphere in which Muhammed lived, and its sentences are imbued with the flavour of the East. The quasi-verse form, with its unfettered and irregular rhythmic flow of the lines, which has in suitable cases been adopted, helps to bring out much of the wild charm of the Arabic. Not the least among its recommendations is, perhaps, that it is scholarly without being pedantic -- that is to say, that it aims at correctness without sacrificing the right effect of the whole to over-insistence on small details.' As a specimen of this well-esteemed translation, here is Rodwell's version of the Virgin Birth; as throughout, he follows the division into verses established in Fluegel's edition:
'And make mention in the Book, of Mary, when she went apart from her family, eastward,
And took a veil to shroud herself from them: and we sent our spirit to her, and he took before her the form of a perfect man.
She said: "I fly for refuge from thee to the God of Mercy! If thou fearest Him, begone from me."
He said: "I am only a messenger of thy Lord, that I may bestow on thee a holy son."
She said: "How shall I have a son, when man hath never touched me? and I am not unchaste."
He said: "So shall it be. Thy Lord bath said: 'Easy is this with me'; and we will make him a sign to mankind, and a mercy from us. For it is a thing decreed."
And she conceived him, and retired with him to a far-off place.
And the throes came upon her by the trunk of a palm. She said: "Oh, would that I had died ere this, and been a thing forgotten, forgotten quite!"
And one cried to her from below her: "Grieve not thou, thy Lord hath provided a streamlet at thy feet: --
And shake the trunk of the palm-tree toward thee: it will drop fresh ripe dates upon thee.
Eat then and drink, and be of cheerful eye: and shouldst thou see a man,
Say, -- Verily, I have vowed abstinence to the God of Mercy. -- To no one will I speak this day."
Then came she with the babe to her people, bearing him. They said, "O Mary! now hast thou done a strange thing!
A sister of Aaron! Thy father was not a man of wickedness, nor unchaste thy mother."
And she made a sign to them, pointing towards the babe. They said, "How shall we speak with him who is in the cradle, ar infant?"
It said, "Verily, I am the servant of God; He bath given me, the Book, and He bath made me a prophet;
And He hath made me blessed wherever I may be, and hath enjoined me prayer and almsgiving so long as I shall live;
And to be duteous to her that bare me: and he hath not made me proud, depraved.
And the peace of God was on me the day I was born, and will be the: day I shall die, and the day I shall be raised to life."'
When Max Mueller was planning his monumental series of Sacred Books of the East for Oxford University Press, he invited the Cambridge scholar Edward Henry Palmer to contribute a new version of the Koran. Palmer, who was an astonishingly versatile and rapid worker, readily accepted; his translation, in two volumes, was published in 1880, two years before its author was murdered in the Egyptian desert. Palmer, a poor orphan who was thought in his teens to be dying of consumption, had remarkable gifts as a translator, especially of poetry into verse; his complete rendering of the collected poems of the Egyptian Baha al-Din Zuhair testifies amply to his accomplishments, and his translation of the Koran is in its way equally remarkable.' While Rodwell reached the great public through the enterprise of J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd., Palmer has enjoyed an equally wide circulation through being included by Oxford University Press in The World's Cla**ics, edited, and introduced by R. A. Nicholson. He abandoned the chronological rearrangement attempted by his contemporary, and divided the matter into paragraphs of varying length; he also avoided the italics that tediously interrupt the flow of the narrative in Sale and Rodwell. This is Palmer's interpretation of the Birth of Jesus:
'And mention, in the Book, Mary; when she retired from her family into an eastern place; and she took a veil to screen herself from them; and we sent unto her our spirit; and he took for her the semblance of a well-made man. Said she, "Verily, I take refuge in the Merciful One from thee, if thou art pious." Said he, "I am only a messenger of thy Lord to bestow on thee a pure boy."
Said she, "How can I have a boy when no man has touched me, and when I am no harlot?" He said, "Thus says thy Lord, It is easy for Me!' and we will make him a sign unto man, and a mercy from us; for it is a decided matter."
So she conceived him, and she retired with him into a remote place. And the labour pains came upon her at the trunk of a palm tree, and she said, "O that I had died before this, and been forgotten out of mind!" and he called to her from beneath her, "Grieve not, for thy Lord has placed a stream beneath thy feet; and shake towards thee the trunk of the palm tree, it will drop upon thee fresh dates fit to gather; so eat, and drink, and cheer thine eye; and if thou shouldst see any, mortal say, 'Verily, I have vowed to the Merciful One a fast, and I will not speak today with a human being'."
Then she brought it to her people, carrying it; said they, "O Mary! thou hast done an extraordinary thing! O sister of Aaron! thy father was not a bad man, nor was thy mother a harlot!"
And she pointed to him, and they said, "How are we to speak with one who is in the cradle a child?" He said, "Verily, I am a servant of God; He has brought me the Book, and He has made me a prophet, and He has made me blessed wherever I be; and He has required of me prayer and almsgiving so long as I live, and piety towards my mother, and has not made me a miserable tyrant; and peace upon me the day I was born, and the day I die, and the day I shall be raised up alive."'
The first half of the present century has seen the study and interpretation of the Koran progress more rapidly and more intensively than ever before. In consequence a number of new English versions have appeared, including some by scholars whose mother-tongue was other than English. All these versions are interesting and merit study; here however it is proposed to limit consideration to two only. The first is sufficiently noteworthy; if for no other reason than that its author was a convert to Islam; he was also a man of distinct literary gifts, having achieved a certain repute as a novelist. Marmaduke Pickthall lived many years in the East, and in the course of his career served the Nizam of Hyderabad, that learned and enlightened m**m ruler of a State which has now been a**imilated into the Republic of India. Pickthall claimed special attention for his work in words that deserve respectful study:
'The aim of this work is to present to English readers what m**ms the world over hold to be the meaning of the words of the Koran, and the nature of that Book, in not unworthy language and concisely, with a view to the requirements of English m**ms. It may be reasonably claimed that no Holy Scripture can be fairly presented by one who disbelieves its inspiration and its message; and this is the first English translation of the Koran by an Englishman who is a m**m. Some of the translations include commentation offensive to m**ms, and almost all employ a style of language which m**ms at once recognize as unworthy. The Koran cannot be translated. That is the belief of old-fashioned Sheykhs and the view of the present writer. The Book is here rendered almost literally and every effort has been made to choose befitting language. But the result is not the Glorious Koran, that inimitable symphony, the very sounds of which move men to tears and ecstasy. It is only an attempt to present the meaning of the Koran -- and peradventure something of the charm -- in English. It can never take the place of the Koran in Arabic, nor is it meant to do so. Before publication the work has been scrutinized word by word and thoroughly revised in Egypt with the help of one whose mother-tongue is Arabic, who has studied the Koran and who knows English; and when difficulties were encountered the translator had recourse to perhaps the greatest living authority on the subject. Every care has thus been taken to avoid unwarrantable renderings.'
The revision was undertaken by my old friend, Dr Muhammad Ahmad al-Ghamrawi, a distinguished medical scholar and a very devout m**m deeply read in cla**ical Arabic literature. The benevolent authority to whose opinion recourse was had was no other than that revered Shaikh al-Azhar, His Excellency Mustafa al-Maraghi, whom I have also had the privilege of knowing. Nevertheless Picktball's version is not free of errors. Being based upon a text lithographed in Turkey, it follows a numeration of the verses frequently differing from that adopted by Fluegel; this gives rise to not a little confusion. For all that, Pickthall's rendering, entitled The Meaning of the Glorious Koran and first published at London in 1930, is an important milestone in the long course of Koranic interpretation; and the extract here chosen for illustration and comparison is the same pa**age on the Nativity of Our Lord:
'16. And make mention of Mary in the Scripture, when she had withdrawn from her people to a chamber looking East.
17. And had chosen seclusion from them. Then We sent unto her Our spirit and it a**umed for her the likeness of a perfect man.
18. She said: Lo! I seek refuge in the Beneficent One from thee, if thou are God-fearing.
19. He said: I am only a messenger of thy Lord, that I may bestow on thee a faultless son.
20. She said: How can I have a son when no mortal hath touched me, neither have I been unchaste?
21. He said: So (it will be). Thy Lord saith: It is easy for Me. And (it will be) that We may make of him a revelation for mankind and a mercy from Us, and it is a thing ordained.
22. And she conceived him, and she withdrew with him to a far place.
25. And the pangs of childbirth drove her unto the trunk of the palm-tree. She said: Oh, would that I had died ere this and had become a thing of naught, forgotten!
24. Then (one) cried unto her from below her, saying: Grieve not! Thy Lord hath placed a rivulet beneath thee,
25. And shake the trunk of the palm-tree toward thee, thou wilt cause ripe dates to fall upon thee.
26. So eat and drink and be consoled. And if thou meetest any mortal, say: Lo! I have vowed a fast unto the Beneficent, and may not speak this day to any mortal.
27. Then she brought him to her own folk, carrying him. They said: O Mary! Thou hast come with an amazing thing.
28.O sister of Aaron! Thy father was not a wicked man nor was thy mother a harlot.
29. Then she pointed to him. They said: How can we talk to one who is in the cradle, a young boy?
30. He spake: Lo! I am the slave of Allah. He hath given me the Scripture and hath appointed me a Prophet,
31. And hath made me blessed wheresoever I may be, and hath enjoined upon me prayer and alms-giving so long as I remain alive,
32; And (hath made me) dutiful toward her who bore me, and hath not made me arrogant, unblest.
33. Peace on me the day I was born, and the day I die, and the day I shall be raised alive!'
The other twentieth-century version chosen for particular mention is the two-volume work of Richard Bell, late Reader of Arabic in the University of Edinburgh, published in that famous city 1937-9. Dr Bell was a most erudite scholar of Arabic, and had devoted many years to his 'critical re-arrangement of the Surahs'. Advancing well beyond the position taken up by the critics of last century, he quite literally took the Koran to pieces and put it together again, his meticulous reconstruction extending as far as individual verses and even parts of verses. As he set up his translation in a kind of tabular form to indicate his views of how the discourse originally ran, it is virtually unreadable; certainly one needs to have some detailed knowledge of the text in order to benefit by the arduous exercise of studying his hard-laboured pages. Bell followed Fluegel's text; and the pa**age on the Birth of Jesus, again chosen for comparison, is fortunately deemed by him to be uninterpolated, though to be true he speculates that it is 'perhaps founded on an earlier version'.
16. Make mention in the Book of Mary; When she withdrew from her people to a place, eastward.
17. And took between herself and them a curtain. Then We sent to her Our spirit, who took for her the form of a human being, shapely.
18. She said: "Lo, I take refuge with the Merciful from thee, if thou art pious."
19. He said: "I am the messenger of thy Lord, that I may give thee a boy, pure."
20. She said: "How shall I have a boy, seeing that man hath not touched me, nor have I been a. harlot?"
21. He said: "So shall it be! Thy Lord hath said: 'It is easy for Me', and (it is) in order that We may make him a sign to the people, and a mercy from Us; it has become a thing decided."
22. So she bore him, and withdrew with him to a place far away.
25. The birth-pangs drove her to the trunk of the palm-tree; she said: "Would that I had died before this, and become a forgetting, forgotten."
24. Then he called to her from beneath her: "Grieve not; thy Lord hath placed beneath thee a streamlet;
25. Shake towards thee the trunk of the palm-tree, and it will let fall upon thee juicy (fruit), ripe.
26. So eat and drink and be of good cheer; and if thou see of mankind any one,
27. Say: 'Verily I have vowed to the Merciful a fast, and I shall not speak today to one of human kind'."
28. Then she brought him to her people, carrying him; they said: "O Mary, thou hast committed a thing improper;
29. O daughter of Aaron, thy father was not a bad man nor was thy mother a harlot."
30. Then she referred (them) to him; they said: "How shall we speak to one who is in the cradle, a child?"
31. He said: "Lo, I am the servant of Allah; He hath bestowed on me the Book, and hath made me a prophet;
32. And hath made me blessed wherever I am, and hath charged me with the Prayer and the Almsgiving as long as I live;
35. And dutiful towards my mother, nor hath He made me a tyrant, wretched.
34. And peace is upon me the day of my birth, and the day of my d**h, and the day of my being raised up alive."
In this rapid review of the Koran in English translation a number of other versions have been left out of account; their examination would add very little to the discussion. The discriminating reader will not have failed to remark, even in the short extracts quoted, a certain uniformity and dull monotony characteristic of all, from the seventeenth down to the twentieth century. A conscientious but slavish faithfulness to the letter -- so far as the letter has been progressively understood has in general excluded any corresponding reflection of the spirit, where that has at all been appreciated.
In choosing to call the present work The Koran Interpreted I have conceded the relevancy of the orthodox m**m view, of which Pickthall, for one, was so conscious, that the Koran is untranslatable. Some of the implications of that doctrine are sketched out in the preface to my The Holy Koran: an Introduction with Selections (Allen & Unwin, 1955), and it is not proposed to repeat the same argument here. Briefly, the rhetoric and rhythm of the Arabic of the Koran are so characteristic, so powerful, so highly emotive, that any version whatsoever is bound in the nature of things to be but a poor copy of the glittering splendour of the original. Never was it more true than in this instance that traduttore traditore. My chief reason for offering this new version of a book which has been 'translated' many times already is that in no previous rendering has a serious attempt been made to imitate, however imperfectly, those rhetorical and rhythmical patterns which are the glory and the sublimity of the Koran. I am breaking new ground here; it may therefore be thought appropriate to explain in short my intentions and my method.
The Koran, as is well known, is made up of 114 Suras of varing length. This volume contains the first twenty, comprising a little over one-half of the whole. The Suras, collected into a volume after the d**h of Muhammad, are not arranged in any chronological order; indeed, most of those reproduced in this volume were revealed to the Prophet in the later years of his mission. But as I am trying in this interpretation to indicate what m**ms of all ages have known as their sacred book, and not how a handful of European scholars have latterly essayed to recast it, I have followed the traditional arrangement for all its admitted perplexities. The Suras themselves are in many instances -- and this has been recognized by m**m students from the earliest times -- of a composite character, holding embedded in them fragments received by Muhammad at widely differing dates; but I have disregarded this accepted fact, wishing to show each Sura as an artistic whole, its often incongruous parts constituting a rich and admirable pattern.
The verses into which the individual Sura is divided usually, but not always, represent rhetorical units, terminated and connected together by a rhyming word. A few bold spirits have ventured on occasion to show this feature by rhyming their translations; the resulting products have not been very impressive. For my own part I have preferred to indicate these terminations and connections by rounding off each succession of loose rhythms with a much shorter line. The function of rhyme in the Koran is quite different from the function of the rhyme in poetry; it therefore demands a different treatment in translation. That has been my method in interpreting narrative, argumentative and legislative pa**ages. Where, however, the original, as often enough, interposes between these leisurely periods sudden outbursts of sharp rhetoric or shapely lyric, I have called attention to such changes of mood and tempo by making corresponding variations in my own rhythmical patterns. In this fashion I have also striven to isolate and then to integrate the diverse sections of which each Sura is composed. The reader may wish to compare the results of applying this an*lysis and method with the traditional way of translating the Koran; here then is my version of the Birth of Jesus: 'And mention in the Book Mary
when she withdrew from her people
to an eastern place,
and she took a veil apart from them;
then We sent unto her Our Spirit
that presented himself to her
a man without fault.
She said, "I take refuge in
the All-merciful from thee! (The etext version does not attempt to display the poetic format because of the excess labour.)
If thou fearest God . . . He said, "I am but a messenger come from thy Lord, to give thee a boy most pure. She said, "How shall I have a son whom no mortal has touched, neither have I been unchaste?" He said, "Even so thy Lord has said:
'Easy is that for Me; and that We may appoint him a sign unto men and a mercy from Us; it is a thing decreed'."
So she conceived him, and withdrew with him to a distant place. And the birth-pangs surprised her by the trunk of the palm-tree. She said, "Would I had died ere this, and become a thing forgotten!" But the one that was below her called to her, "Nay, do not sorrow; see; thy Lord has set below thee a rivulet.
Shake also to thee the palm-trunk, and there shall come tumbling upon thee dates fresh and ripe. Eat therefore, and drink, and be comforted; and if thou shouldst see any mortal, say, 'I have vowed to the All-merciful a fast, and today I will not speak to any man'."
Then she brought the child to her folk carrying him; and they said, "Mary, thou hast surely committed a monstrous thing! Sister of Aaron, thy father was not a wicked man, nor was thy mother a woman unchaste." Mary pointed to the child then; but they said, "How shall we speak to one who is still in the cradle, a little child?"
He said, "Lo, I am God's servant; God has given me the Book, and made me a Prophet. Blessed He has made me, wherever I may be; and He has enjoined me to pray, and to give the alms, so long as I live, and likewise to cherish my mother; He has not made me arrogant, unprosperous.
Peace be upon me, the day I was horn, and the day I die, and the day I am raised up alive!"
If, set out like this, the Koranic treatment of this most sacred theme seems to recall, however distantly and however faintly, some mediaeval Christian carol, the resemblance is surely not fortuitous; but I make bold to claim that the point escapes notice in any other kind of translation.
There is a repertory of familiar themes running through the whole Koran; each Sura elaborates or adumbrates one or more -- often many -- of these. Using the language of music, each Sura is a rhapsody composed of whole or fragmentary leitmotivs; the an*logy is reinforced by the subtly varied rhythmical flow of the discourse. If this diagnosis of the literary structure of the Koran may be accepted as true -- and it accords with what we know of the poetical instinct, indeed the whole aesthetic impulse, of the Arabs -- it follows that those notorious incongruities and irrelevancies, even those 'wearisome repetitions', which have proved such stumbling-blocks in the way of our Western appreciation will vanish in the light of a clearer understanding of the nature of the m**m scriptures. A new vista opens up; following this hitherto unsuspected and unexplored path, the eager interpreter hurries forward upon an exciting journey of discovery, and is impatient to report his findings to a largely indifferent and incredulous public.
During the long months, the dark and light months, of labouring at this interpretation, eclectic where the ancient commentators differ in their understanding of a word or a phrase, unannotated because notes in plenty are to be found in other versions, and the radiant beauty of the original is not clouded by such vexing interpolations -- all through this welcome task I have been reliving those Ramadan nights of long ago, when I would sit on the veranda of my Gezira house and listen entranced to the old, white-bearded Sheykh who chanted the Koran for the pious delectation of my neighbour. He had the misfortune, my neighbour, to be a prominent politician, and so in the fullness of his destiny, but not the fullness of his years, he fell to an a**a**in's bullet; I like to think that the merit of those holy recitations may have eased the way for him into a world free of the tumult and turbulence that attended his earthly career. It was then that I, the infidel, learnt to understand and react to the thrilling rhythms of the Koran, only to be apprehended when listened to at such a time and in such a place. In humble thankfulness I dedicate this all too imperfect essay in imitation to the memory of those magical Egyptian nights.