Content area
Full Text
BIBLIOGRAPHY OF THE TRANSLATIONS OF THE MEANINGS OF THE GLORIOUS QUR'AN INTO ENGLISH: 1649-2002 A CRITICAL STUDY
The present bibliography is more than just a plain bibliography, it is rightly termed as "a critical study" of the 47 complete English translations of the meanings of the Qur'n, starting with the earliest one, The Alcoran of Mahomet, Translated out of Arabic for the satisfaction of all that desire to looking into the Turkish vanities (1649) by Alexander Ross (1592-1654), to the latest joint venture of Abdalhaqq Bewley and Aisha Bewley, a newly converted American Muslim couple, under the title, The Nobel Qur'n: A new Rendering of its Meaning in English (Norwich, UK: 1999). The bibliography covers all the editions and reprints of the 47 translations up to 2002.
Professor Abdur Raheem Kidwai is a keen tracker of the ever growing number of English translations of the meanings of the Qurf"¢n at least for the last quarter of a century. He has been regularly contributing to the subject through his reviews of the newly published translations in the Muslim World Book Review.
In the present work, alphabetically arranged bibliography under the name of the translators, Professor Kidwai furnishes information possibly on each and every translation under these five sub-headings:
* Biography [of the translator]
* Publication history [of the translation]
* Features of the translation
* The mindset [of the translator, as reflected in the translation] and
* Bibliography of reviews on some specific translations;
This information follows the list of the editions/reprints of the translation in chronological order, mentioning every time the exact title, the publisher, number of volumes, if any, and number of pages. The sources for all this information are also cited. Occasionally number of the libraries that home a specific edition is given, and some of the libraries are mentioned.
By going through the information, collected and masterly arranged by Professor Kidwai, one finds that the orientalists took the lead to present the meanings of the Qurf"¢n into English for missionary purposes with polemical slant of different degrees. Alexander Ross, the first English translator of the Qurf"¢n did not know Arabic. His translation was actually an English version of the French translation that had appeared in 1647. In the analysis of the...