References to the Jewish and Christian sources

References to the Jewish and Christian sources

Certainly, Muslims know that the Koran contains narrations and names that appear in the Old Testament and the New Testament. For them, this fact does not mean that Muhammad borrowed them from these books, but that these books, like the Koran itself, have the same author, God. It is a dogma that Muslims cannot question without exposing themselves to serious danger. Our goal is not to contradict this dogma, but to provide the interested reader (as do other translators: Hamidullah,¹ Boubakeur, Mandel, Masson,² etc.) with some elements of comparison, without any pretension of exhaustiveness, while limiting ourselves almost exclusively to the recognized or apocryphal Jewish and Christian writings that preceded the Koran.

As the biblical narrations in the Koran sometimes repeat themselves in different chapters (ex gr: the story of Lot in relation with Sodom and Gomorrah), we have made references to the Jewish and Christian texts wherever we thought it most suitable, with cross references, in order to avoid repetition. The interested reader can complete these references by consulting the index at the end of the book.

Method used in the translation

- Whenever we translate a term in a verse, we search for the term and its derivatives in the whole of the Koran³ and we attempt to find one suitable English term that fits everywhere more or less, as far as the English language allows it and without violating the contextual meaning of the Arabic term. Thus, the term أوحى and its derivatives are translated everywhere by the verb to reveal and its English derivatives. In the same way the term الغيب is translated everywhere as secret (see the meaning given to this term in the footnote of verse 87/2:3). The term آية (pl. آيات) can be translated, either by verse, or by sign (in the sense of miracle).⁴ As the context does not always permit to see which of these two meanings is the most plausible, we opted for the unique term of sign, insofar as, according to the Koran and the Muslims, every verse constitutes a sign, a miracle.

- After translating the terms, we controlled whether the concerned verse or a part of it has been repeated elsewhere, and we adopted the same translation everywhere. This approach enabled us to avoid the lack of harmony noted in some translations. For instance, Asad translates 73/21:7: «If you do not know this, ask the followers of earlier revelation», and 70/16:43: «and if you have not [yet] realized this, ask the followers of [earlier] revelation», whereas the Arabic text in both verses is the same. He translates 41/36:38: «that is laid down by the will of the Almighty, the All-Knowing», and 61/41:12: «such is the ordaining of the Almighty, the All-Knowing», whereas the Arabic text in both verses is the same. He translates 43/35:38: «He has full knowledge of what is in the hearts [of men]», 89/3:154: «God is aware of what is in the hearts [of men]», whereas the Arabic text in both verses is the same.

- There are different ways of translating the Koran. The translator can paraphrase a text in English, without taking into account all the words. This method has been followed notably by Asad and the co-authors Hilali and Khan who take great liberty, especially in the laconic passages of the Koran. There exists literal translations which stick to the root of the terms. The method has especially been followed in French by Chouraqui, who does not hesitate to resort to neologisms and sometimes to the transliteration of the Arabic terms. For instance, he translates the invocation at the head of the chapters as: «Au nom d'Allah, le Matriciant, le Matriciel», under the pretext that the two Arabic terms Rahman and Rahim drift from the term rahm, the matrix. Many translators prefer to maintain the term Allah, whereas other translations, including ours, prefer the term God. Between the literal translation and the periphrastic translation, we chose a median way, while attempting to take into consideration as much as possible every Arabic term, rendering it by one English term. It is generally the method followed by Pickthall, Shakir and Bewley. However, the word by word translation is not possible for some Arabic terms for which it is necessary to find an English term as close as possible to the Arabic term, while indicating the literal translation in a note.

- Arabic language uses specific terms to indicate gender. The usual translations rarely take into account this element. Thus, the term إنسان is generally translated by man, a term indicating man and woman in English. However, the English correspondent of the Arabic term إنسان, is human, the term used in our translation. We also translated the plural of the word الناس by humans, instead of men or people. The term إنسان is used by the Koran in opposition to spirits, animals, plants and inert materials. The Arabic term قوم which indicates a reduced human group is translated sometimes by people, sometimes by tribe. We preferred to keep the term people.

- Arabic terms that have an anglicized equivalent have been rendered by the latter. So the term shaytan has been rendered by Satan (instead of devil); the two terms jahim and jahannam, by gehenna (instead of hell); the term ifrit, by Afreet (instead of stalwart or audacious); the term jin, by djinn (instead of invisible beings or sprite); the term majnoun, by possessed by a djinn (instead of madman, crazy or insane); the term falak by felucca (instead of ship or boat); the term samum by simoom (instead of scorching winds, flames). The same with people’s names such as Abraham (Ibrahim), Jacob (Ya'qub), John (Yahya), Jesus (Isa), Job (Ayyub), Mary (Miryam), Moses (Musa), Noah (Nuh); or places' names like Egypt (Misr), Makka (Makkah), Medina (Madinah), etc.

- We assume that perfect synonyms do not exist, neither in Arabic, nor in English. For this reason, we have constantly attempted to find an English term for every Arabic term. Thus, the three Arabic terms الهم أوحى انزل are translated respectively by to reveal, to descend and to inspire. The translation of Hamidullah, ex gr, made no distinction between the three terms. The terms أراد and شاء are translated respectively by want and wish.

- We have avoided the recourse to neologisms. We checked the existence of every English word, notably in Merriam Webster computerized dictionary (http://www.merriaM-webster.com/). When an English term admitted in the dictionaries seems inaccessible to the public, we indicated its meaning in the note. We have also attempted to avoid paraphrasing, as much as possible, in rendering the Arabic term or expression. The Koran is known, especially in its first chapters, for its concise or laconic style, with many unsaid words, considered as an oratory distinction in Arabic language. For this reason, we have opted for conciseness in our translation in order to better render the spirit of the Koran. Hence, we translated the expression فَصَبْرٌ جَمِيلٌ by «Endurance is beautiful» (53/12:18), instead of «But [as for myself] patience in adversity is most goodly [in the sight of God]!» (Asad). We also tried to let non arabophone readers discover Arabic terms instead of adapting them to the English terms (ex gr: 52/11:56: compare our translation to those indicated in the note).

- We have added to the Arabic version, for the first time in history, modern punctuation, as we have done for the Arabic edition, and we indicated gaps with the brackets [...] and dislocation of the text with the brackets [---]. We define dislocation, the lack of connection between verses or between elements of the same verse. Finally, we use the sign ~ to indicate what Muslim scholars call al-tadhyil: term related to dhayl (tail) denoting the addition of items to the end of a verse to maintain the rhyme, elements often unrelated to the rest of the verse. We also reported in the notes the inversions and the enallages. By inversion, in Arabic taqdim wal-ta'khir, we mean the presence in the Qur'an of poorly structured elements giving rise to misinterpretations, and that exegetes had to restructure to obtain a coherent meaning. As for the enallage, in Arabic iltifat, it means the substitution of a time, a mode, a name or a person by another time, another mode, another name or another person, often to maintain the rhyme But we have avoided to report in the notes other forms of grammatical and stylistic errors which are difficult to understand without the knowledge of Arabic, errors that the reader can find in the Arabic edition

- Arabic language often uses the particle wa (and) at the beginning of the sentence and where the English language uses a comma or a period. The particle is suppressed in our translation whenever it is superfluous in English.

- Arabic language does not distinguish between capital and small letters. Some translations use capital letters for the adjectives and the pronouns which refer to God. We have avoided this usage.

- Some terms or passages are ambivalent and open to different translations. We have provided the translation that seems most suitable. We have indicated, however, in the footnotes, for information’s sake, one or several other translations, done notably by Muslims (ex gr: 39/7:199), even where the latter sometimes copied non-Muslim translators. Our purpose has been to give the reader the choice between different translations and to show him the difficulty of translating some Koranic passages, even by highly qualified Muslims. We note that the consulted French, Italian and English translations have the tendency to render the text of the Koran legible for the Western readers by finding some solutions to ambiguous passages. For this reason, these translations are easier to understand than the Arabic text, but without necessarily being faithful to the latter. We avoided following their example in order to remain as faithful as possible to the original Arabic text, even when the text is ambiguous. One can say in this respect that the more a translation is beautiful, the less it is faithful to the Arabic text.

- There exist some attempts to translate the Koran or some of its passages by referring to Hebrew and Syriac sources. It is notably the case for the translations of Christoph Luxenberg, Gabriel Sawma and Bruno Bonnet-Eymard. Although enriching, such translations remain isolated and depart from those commonly known. We have sometimes indicated them in the notes for the interested readers, without taking position.

- We tried to make short notes to not bore the reader. But the Arabic-speaking reader can refer to our Arabic edition that also gives the linguistic and stylistic mistakes of the Quran, the meaning of its ambiguous words and the circumstances of the revelation.

Before concluding this introduction, we would like to thank Felix Jere PHIRI for the linguistic revision of the English text. We remain however the unique to be responsible for the errors and the opinions expressed herein.

A narration of Muhammad says: «When a judge utilizes his skill of judgement and comes to a right decision, he will have a double reward, but when he uses his judgement and commits a mistake, he will have a single reward»¹. Every translation implies some hazards and no translator can pretend to be perfect, however much he tries. We ask the readers, whatever their religion, to delve into this work and to send us their constructive remarks and criticisms aiming at the improvement of the next edition.

Sami Awad ALDEEB ABU-SAHLIEH

email: sami.aldeeb@yahoo.fr