The opening of Introduction
THERE is surely no need to-day to insist on the importance of a close study of the Korân for all who would comprehend the many vital problems connected with the Islamic World; and yet few of us, I imagine, among the many who possess translations of this book have been at pains to read it through. It must, however, be borne in mind that the Korân plays a far greater rôle among the Muhammadans than does the Bible in Christianity in that it provides not only the canon of their faith, but also the text-book of their ritual and the principles of their Civil Law. It was the Great Crusades that first brought the West into close touch with Islam, but between the years 1096 and 1270 we only hear of one attempt to make known to Europe the Sacred Book of the Moslems, namely, the Latin version made in 1143, by Robert of Retina (who, Sale tells us, was an Englishman), and Hermann of Dalmatia, on the initiative of Petrus Venerabilis, the Abbot of Clugny, which version was ultimately printed by T. Bibliander in Basel in 1543, nearly a hundred years after the fall of Constantinople.