The Kingdom and the Qur’an

Front matter

GLOBAL QUR AN

The Kingdom and the Qur’an

Translating the Holy Book of pes

Contents

A Note on the Author Acknowledgements Notes on Transliteration and Translation Abbreviations Introduction 1. Twentieth-Century Debates on the Translatability of the Qur’an in the Middle East Early Debates on Translatability at al-Azhar University The Domestic Salafi Context: Wahhabi Hermeneutical Theory and Translation Activities Prior to the Age of Modernisation 2. The Muslim World League: A Forerunner to International Translational da°wa Networks

The MWL: An Innovative Step in the International Promotion of Islam

The First Translations

Index

7 77

89 90 96

172 177 185 203

A Note on the Author

Mykhaylo Yakubovych (born 1986 in Ostroh, Ukraine) obtained his PhD in 2011 from The National University of Ostroh Academy with a study on interreligous relations in medieval Sunni traditionalism. Currently a member of the research team on the ERC-funded project ‘GloQur—The Global Qur’an’ (University of Freiburg, Germany), he studies Qur’an translations produced by international institutions and publishers, with a focus on Central Asian and Eastern European languages. He is the author of an annotated translation of the Qur’an into Ukrainian (first published in 2013), along with several books and translations from Arabic, and many research articles published in academic journals from the UK, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Australia. Yakubovych has conducted several academic projects on the Islamic manuscript heritage, including the post-classical intellectual history of the Crimean Khanate (at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton University, USA) and sixteenthseventeenth century Qur’an interpretations produced by Lithuanian Tatars (at Nicolaus Copernicus University, Poland). His ORCID iD is 0000-0002-8305-1166.

Acknowledgements

This book owes its existence to a research project that received generous funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the Horizon 2020 research and innovation program of the European Union (grant agreement n° 863650). I am deeply indebted to Professor Johanna Pink for extending her invitation to join the project, providing constant support, conducting meticulous reviews of various drafts of the manuscript of this volume, offering invaluable advice, and providing other forms of academic guidance that have been highly inspirational to me. I must also acknowledge the invaluable contributions of my colleagues on the GloQur team (Elvira Kulieva, Kamran Khan, and Yulianingsih Riswan), who have participated with me in numerous discussions, colloquia, and workshops that have helped shape many of the ideas presented in this book. I am also deeply thankful to the British Academy for organising my research stay at Coventry University, where I discussed some of my preliminary findings related to Muslim-Christian relations in Qur’an translations.

The list of people to whom I owe thanks would also be incomplete without mention of Dr V. Abdul Rahim, the head of the Translation Center at the King Fahd Glorious Qur’an Printing Complex, who not only provided me with a unique academic setting that was highly conducive to working on Qur'an translations but also shared his personal experience as a prolific author, editor, and translator during our meetings in Medina. I would also like to express my gratitude to the various people from Muslim organisations and communities who have helped me with contacts and sources, including those who have sent me specific translations, such as Ayse Zuhal San (of the Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs in Ankara), Mehmet Timoshev (of the Sinan-Pasha Medrese in Istanbul), not to mention Abdallah Shisterov, x The Kingdom and the Qur'an

Musa Medvedev, and Artur Shevchenko (all graduates of the Islamic University of Madinah).

Iwould like to give special thanks to Dr Helen Blatherwick, the editor who worked with me to transfer the original project into English so as to make it available to a wider readership. Any mistakes or shortcomings that may exist in this work are solely my own responsibility.

Finally, publication of this book would not have been possible without funding from the University of Freiburg in Germany.

Notes on Transliteration and Translation

This book covers the recent history of Islam in Saudi Arabia and beyond. In addition to the Arabic sources quoted (using the transliteration system and standards established by the International Journal of Middle East Studies), plenty of material in other languages is cited as well. In an attempt to make the text as reader friendly as possible, words which are already in common usage in English (e.g., ‘Qur'an’, ‘Sunni’, ‘Hanafi’, and ‘Salafism’) are presented according to conventional spelling. These are only transliterated in the context of Arabic quotations. For all other non-Roman scripts, almost all of the sources quoted, and names of individuals and organisations, are presented using a simplified transcription system. Dates are normally referenced according to the Gregorian calendar (Hijri dates are given only when Gregorian are not stated in the source cited). For those persons and organisations that have an officially recognised English spelling, transliterated forms of their original names are provided only when necessary. All quotations of English translations of the Qur’an are presented verbatim (so, for example, the sometimes ‘problematic’ wording of the first edition of the Hilali-Khan translation is replicated exactly), but additional explanations are provided where necessary.

Abbreviations

DITIB: Turkish-Islamic Union for Religious Affairs

IIIT: International Institute of Islamic Thought

IUM: Islamic University of Madinah

KFGQPC: King Fahd Glorious Qur'an Printing Complex KSA: Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

MOIA: Ministry of Islamic Affairs, Call, and Guidance of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

MWL: Muslim World League

PCSRI: Permanent Committee for Scholarly Research and Ifta TDRA: Turkish Directorate of Religious Affairs

TDV: Turkish Religious Foundation

WAMY: World Assembly of Muslim Youth

WICS: World Islamic Call Society