The Study Qurʾan: A New Translation and Commentary by Seyyed Hossein Nasr et al.

Abstract

Reviewed by: The Study Qurʾan: A New Translation and Commentary by Seyyed Hossein Nasr et al. Louis Medoff The Study Qurʾan: A New Translation and Commentary, by Seyyed Hossein Nasr, Caner K. Dagli, Maria Massi Dakake, Joseph E. B. Lumbard and Mohammed Rustom, 2015. New York: HarperCollins, lix+ 1988 pp., maps, $59.99. ISBN: 978-0-06-112586-7 (hbk) One of the most difficult and often underappreciated tasks in Islamic Studies is translating foundational and classical texts in an accessible, engaging and reasonably accurate manner. In recent years, translation of the Qur'an has received a remarkable amount of attention, and as result there are now some excellent readings available, notably Ali Qaraʾi's The Qur'an: With a Phrase-by-Phrase English Translation (ICAS Press, 2003), Muhammad Abdel Haleem's The Qur'an: A New Translation (Oxford University Press, 2004) and most recently Arthur Droge's Qur'an: A New Annotated Translation (Equinox, 2013). With so many renditions of Islam's sacred text currently on the market, it is natural, whenever another is published, to question what need it serves. This enquiry is especially pertinent when related fields, such as proper translation of Qur'anic commentaries, are still seriously neglected. The Study Qur'an: A New Translation and Commentary, written by an editorial board headed by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and assisted by Caner Dagli, Maria Dakake, Joseph Lumbard and Mohammed Rustom, is a monumental work ten years in the making that has received copious praise. Those familiar with Christian and Jewish study bibles will no doubt recognize the format of The Study Qur'an as an elegantly presented translation paired with extensive annotations, scholarly essays, detailed indices and maps printed on very thin paper. The Study Qur'an starts with introductory essays in which Professor Nasr gives an overview of the meaning of the Holy Book to Muslims and how it relates to their personal and social lives. This discussion is similar in substance and tone to Nasr's other introductory works on Islam and is clearly aimed at the non-Muslim novice. This is followed by a lengthy [End Page 367] discussion of the origins of The Study Qur'an, its aims, and the editorial board's translation and annotation philosophy. Nasr gives an important insight into the rationale of The Study Qur'an when he reveals that he stipulated with the publisher that all the contributors believe the Qur'an to be the verbatim word of God, not merely the central text of Islam. Furthermore, Nasr rejected the participation of secular Orientalists, Muslim modernizers and (that unfortunate and imprecise term) 'fundamentalists'. These strict conditions obviously leave the editors open to the accusation of not being critical enough, although such a claim seems misplaced. First, the point of a study scripture is to inform sympathetic readers about the meaning of the sacred text to its learned adherents, not to drastically deconstruct and revise that understanding. Second, as the annotations of The Study Qur'an amply demonstrate, pre-modern Muslim Qurʾanic commentary is hardly uncritical, unless criticism is arbitrarily confined to historicism and revisionism. That The Study Qur'an has received so much praise from recognized academics is a positive sign that the insider's view is increasingly becoming an integral part of Islamic Studies. The Qur'an translation of The Study Qur'an is a straightforward affair and rarely diverges from conventions established by the seminal renditions of Muhammad Pickthall, Yusuf'Ali and - especially-Arthur Arberry. Thus, the basmala is translated as 'in the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful', subḥān Allāh is rendered as 'glory be to God' and laylat al-qadr is 'night of power'. One apparently new choice is the translation of taqwā as 'reverence'. As one of the editors points out, the root w-q-y linguistically means wariness and care, while in the Qur'an it denotes 'fear, mindfulness, and a constant awareness of God's Presence and Power' (pp. 14–15). It is questionable whether translating the (admittedly difficult) phrase ittaqi Allāh as 'reverence God' expresses these ideas better than previous proposals. It is unfortunate that more novel suggestions, along the lines of...