Appendix - Bibliography of translations of the Qur'ān into European languages

Summary

The Qur'ān is both inimitable and untranslatable. Yet many attempts have been made to imitate it and to translate it, even by Muslims themselves, despite the total prohibition or disapproval of such action on the part of religious authority.

ORIENTAL TRANSLATIONS

Many translations into the oriental languages of Islam exist. Persian translations have been recorded by Storey and Turkish by Hamidullah, preceded by Birge. The list of eastern languages in which translations exist is a long one; Chauvin knew of the following: Armenian, Arvi (Tamil written with Arabic characters), Bengali, Gujarati, Hebrew, Hindustani, Javanese, Macassarese, Malay, Panjabi, Persian, Pushtu, Sanskrit, Sindhi, Tamil and Turkish. To this already long list we can add Amharic, Assamese, Burmese, Chinese, Georgian, Syriac. A translation into Maltese is being undertaken. Professor Muhammad Hamidullah has been active in publishing samples of translations. His Quran in every language came out in a third edition in Hyderabad-Deccan in 1936; at the time he had available in manuscript a fourth edition which gave examples of translations in 102 languages. A similar series of specimens, giving the first, short chapter of the Qur'ān (the fatihah) in a large number of languages, was published in Lapensee chiite (III–XII, 1960–2) and in a revised form in France–Islam(11, 1967 onwards).

AFRICAN LANGUAGES

In African languages several versions have been made into Swahili, including one produced by the Ahmadiyya community, whose Uganda Mission also produced one in Luganda in 1965.