The Enlightenment Qur'an

The Politics of Translation and the Construction of Islam

Ziad Elmarsafy

• Publisher: Oneworld Publications
• Year: 2014
• eBook ISBN: 9781780744858
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Islamic Theology

Iconoclastic and fiercely rational, the European Enlightenment witnessed the birth of modern Western society and thought. Reason was sacrosanct and for the first time, religious belief and institutions were open to widespread criticism. In this groundbreaking book, Ziad Elmarsafy challenges this accepted wisdom to argue that religion was still hugely influential in the era. But the religion in question wasn't Christianity – it was Islam. Charting the history of Qur'anic translations in Europe during the 18th and early 19th Centuries, Elmarsafy shows that a number of key enlightenment figures – including Voltaire, Rousseau, Goethe, and Napoleon – drew both inspiration and ideas from the Qur'an. Controversially placing Islam at the heart of the European Enlightenment, this lucid and well argued work is a valuable window into the interaction of East and West during this pivotal epoch in human history.

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TRANSLATORS AND TRANSLATIONS OF THE QUR’ĀN

At first glance the most striking aspect of the translation of the Qur’ān into Western languages is that it exists at all. At second glance, the extant translations amaze by their quantity and the tendency many of them exhibit toward polemic and mythmaking. They bear witness simultaneously to a history of conflict – not only with Islam but within Christendom – as well as a secret attraction across the boundary between cultures and religions.

Perhaps inevitably, the earliest serious attempt at translating the Qur’ān was conceived at a key geographic and cultural interface between the Muslim and non-Muslim worlds; namely the Iberian peninsula. In 1142 Peter the Venerable, the hyperactive Abbot of Cluny, was invited to Spain by Emperor Alfonso VII in order to discuss certain financial and diplomatic matters.¹ Like the rest of Christendom, Peter’s view of Islam was marked by the recent memory of the First Crusade, though he was exceptional in not being happy with the direction of the movement that increasingly saw war as an end in itself. Peter wanted to convert Muslims rather than exterminate them, and one means of doing so would be to study Islam the better to be able to refute it. Along with the trope of substituting words for weapons, this was to become a standard part of Christian anti-Muslim polemical and apologetic literature. While in Spain, he commissioned a translation of the Qur’ān and a number of auxiliary texts aimed at providing the reader with a solid source of information about Islamic history and Muslim doctrine. The Toledan Collection, as the result came to be known, was a group effort: Robert of Ketton translated both the Qur’ān and a compilation of Muslim traditions entitled Fabulae saracenorum (Fables of the Saracens); Herman of Dalmatia translated Sa‛īd b. ‛Umar’s Kitāb nasab Rasūl Allāh (Book of the Genealogy of the Messenger of God) as the Liber generationis Mahumet et nutritura eius and ‛Abdallāh b. Salām’s Masā’il (Questions) as Doctrina Mahumet, while Peter of Toledo and Peter of Poitiers co-translated an early Arabic Christian apology, the Risālat ‛Abdallāh b. Ismā‛īl al-Hāshimīilā ‛Abd al-Masīḥ b. Isḥāq al-Kindī wa risālat al-Kindī ilā-l-Hāshimī (‛Abdallāh b. Ismā ‘īl al-Hāshimī’s Letter to ‛Abd al-Masīḥ b. Isḥāq al-Kindī and al-Kindī’s Reply).² The whole was accompanied by Peter the Venerable’s summary, the Summa totius haeresis saracenorum (Sum of All the Heresies of the Saracens).

Robert of Ketton called his translation the Lex saracenorum, thereby setting another lasting trend that would be imitated by future translators. The idea of the Qur’ān as a source text of Muslim law, rather than the text that fulfills both doctrinal and liturgical functions, would hamper Western translators for centuries (though certainly not in the eyes of the translators), as would the sacred status of the language of the Qur’ān. Robert tried to produce a Latin translation marked by the elevated style associated with sacred rather than profane texts, frequently inserting material taken from exegetical commentaries on the Qur’ān into the text itself, with the result that his translation comes across as a well-informed paraphrase rather than an accurate rendition of the original.³ One place where this is especially evident is in Robert of Ketton’s “arrangement” of the Qur’ānic text, whereby the divisions between the various chapters (“Azoaras”) correspond only occasionally to the divisions between sūras (mainly after Q10), and at other times follow the divisions between the aḥzāb (sixtieths), leading to a translation of the Qur’ān that contains 124 “chapters” instead of the canonical 114.⁴ The titles of the “chapters” usually followed the Arabic name of the sūra in question accompanied in some copies by hostile rubrics emphasizing the falsity and incoherence of what was to follow. Later marginal annotations added to the polemical tone, thereby making it impossible to read Robert’s translation (which, as Thomas Burman points out, is itself fairly restrained) without being as shocked as a Christian should be by the ostensibly heretical character of the Qur’ān. The coexistence on the same page of philological interest in the Arabic language and the obsessive concern with the safety of the Christian reader is probably one reason why, despite the liberties that Robert of Ketton took with the text, it was a lasting success, finding a place in numerous European libraries and serving as the basis for numerous future Western translations of the Qur’ān. Around 1210, Mark of Toledo started work on a more literal translation for the Archbishop of Toledo, Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, giving his finished manuscript the title Liber Alchorani and adding a preface to make clear his hostile and polemical credentials. Despite the greater accuracy of Mark’s version, or at least its greater similarity with the syntax of the original, the Toledan Collection’s user-friendliness, aided and abetted by the Cluniac network, ensured its wider distribution and longevity. Its arrangement – framing the Qur’ān with abundant material and numerous polemical annotations while paying careful attention to the exegetical and philological dimension of the work – established a paradigm that would be followed for centuries.⁵

One key shift in the practice of the translation of the Qur’ān came about with the introduction of bilingual translations in the fifteenth century. In 1480–1481 Flavius Mithridates, a Jewish convert to Christianity who would later teach the Kabbalah to Pico della Mirandola, translated Q21 and Q22 into Latin with the Arabic on facing pages. His translation left much to be desired, but it was not without consequence. Soon thereafter Egidio da Viterbo followed the example of Peter the Venerable: having been named cardinal in 1517, he was sent to Spain as a papal legate and there commissioned a translation by a Spaniard, Iohannes Gabriel Terrolensis. The result is a translation that, like the Complutensian Polyglot Bible, seems designed for the student of the language of the Qur’ān and the culture of Islam rather than one interested mainly in anti-Muslim polemics. The translation was designed to occupy four columns: the Arabic text, its transliteration into Latin, the Latin translation, and notes on the translation, thereby allowing the reader quick and easy access to each part of the text. Unlike Robert of Ketton’s translation, there is a deliberate and visible separation of text from commentary in Egidio’s edition, a practice that would become increasingly evident in future translations. Remarkably, the notes attach far less weight to polemic than they do to philology – something that Marracci’s bilingual translation would fail to do. Despite its quality, however, Egidio’s edition did not circulate as widely as the Toledan Collection.

The Toledan Collection was printed in 1543 with numerous revisions by Theodor Bibliander (né Buchmann), a successor of Zwingli’s at Basel, as part of a multi-volume reference work under the title Machumetis Sarracenorum principis vita ac doctrina omnis ... (The Life and Teachings of Machumet, Prince of the Saracens).⁶ The publication itself proved controversial: Bibliander’s printer, Johann Oporinus (né Herbst), followed the usual practice of failing to inform the municipal authorities that he was about to publish the Qur’ān in order to speed up the process. He was denounced while the printing was well underway, and ordered to stop during the ensuing debate among the authorities on the suitability of his enterprise. Oporinus ignored the order again and was imprisoned for several days while his proofs were confiscated. Finally, he was then released on condition that he not contact anyone until a final decision was made, but by this point word had reached Bibliander and, through him, Protestant authorities elsewhere, leading to the interventions of Luther and Melanchthon. The fact that multiple parties intervened and numerous (sometimes contradictory) opinions were voiced bears witness to the degree of public interest in the Qur’ān.

The case against printing the Qur’ān relied on arguments forged during the long medieval tradition of anti-Muslim polemic. Under the leadership of Sebastian Münster, a former teacher of Bibliander who held the chair of Hebrew at Basel, the argument centered on the claim that there was nothing in the Qur’ān worth reading. Scholars and specialists may need access to the Qur’ān, but certainly not the general public. The Qur’ān was blasphemous and the public had to be protected. The opposite case was argued under the leadership of Oswald Myconius, another former teacher of Bibliander who had by then become the preacher of Basel and professor of New Testament exegesis. The Qur’ān did indeed contain much that was dangerous, but it was precisely in order to alert the public to its dangers that it had to be printed. In view of the continuing threat of Ottoman military incursions into central Europe and subsequent conversions to Islam, it was a matter of great importance that the Qur’ān be disseminated in order to inform the public about the true character of Islam. Finally, publishing this text in Basel would contribute to its prestige as a progressive center of liberal and tolerant thinking. Although the risk of anyone being converted by a mere reading of a book as difficult as the Qur’ān was small, the proponents of the printing advised adding some material to the publication to guide the reader through it theologically.

It was, in fact, after the addition of large quantities of such theological “guidance” (read: anti-Muslim polemic) that the Toledan Collection was finally published. Not only were there apologies by Bibliander and Melanchthon, but a prefatory letter by Luther as well (though this was not added to all editions). Far from being prompted by any inclination toward Islam on Luther’s part, this letter marks the culmination of a long series of works in which Luther tried to learn as much as he could about Islam as a way of fighting the Turks, the Pope, and heterodoxy within the church.⁷ “Know your enemy” might stand as a useful summary of Luther’s perspective on the necessity of translating the Qur’ān.⁸ Bibliander’s apology is equally forthright in its denunciation not only of Islam, but also of his own Christian enemies, not least among them being the Catholics and Anabaptists. Indeed, Bibliander argues, the latter are a case in point of what happens to a Christian society that is ignorant of its own traditions and consequently falls victim to pseudoprophecy. Bibliander’s aim, in other words, was to show where true heresy was located.

Bibliander’s edition contains a light re-working of Robert of Ketton’s translation – his modest command of Arabic did not allow him to do much more than that. Bibliander’s annotations, however, were copious, some bearing on the variants between the manuscripts that he used, some commenting on linguistic aspects of Robert of Ketton’s translation – some even giving the Arabic original of a given word in Hebrew transcription, thereby attesting to the widespread importance of Semitic philology as a point of access to the study of Arabic and the Qur’ān at this point in time – and marginal comments, usually expressing dismay or contempt at what he takes to be the Qur’ān’s contradictions and lies. Bibliander does not fail to add a significant number of notes on parallels between the Qur’ān and the Bible, usually ones bearing on a topic or story common to both. This particular use of textual points of contact as an exercise in comparative religious studies would become a regular feature of translations of the Qur’ān during the following two centuries. Although he consulted Arabic manuscripts of the Qur’ān, Bibliander did not consult any exegetical material at first hand. The three volumes of Bibliander’s magnum opus are divided by function: first the sources, then the refutations, and, finally, history. The Toledan Collection takes up the first volume. The second contains polemical material, much of which was written after the twelfth century, including works by Riccoldo da Monte Croce, Juan Luis Vives, Savonarola, and Nicholas of Cusa. The inclusion of the latter’s Cribratio Alcorani is a significant addition that demonstrates Bibliander’s (and the reader’s) interest in approaches to Islam that attempted to harmonize it with Christianity, albeit through a mystical lens, as well as the heuristic importance for Renaissance readers of parallels between the Qur’ān and the gospels.⁹ The third volume contains several works on the history and political order of the Ottoman Empire by Luther, Giovio, and Pope Pius II, among others.¹⁰ Thus the reader, according to his or her patience and attention span, is led from the origins of Islam to the politically strained relations between Islam and Christendom at the time.

Despite its questionable quality, the significance of this publication lies in the fact that it is the first published translation of the Qur’ān, as well as the fact that the Qur’ān has now become an integral part of polemics within Christianity as opposed to being used to address Christian–Muslim polemic. The pattern whereby a given theological opponent is accused of either being a Muslim or of being an ally of the Muslims acquires an additional dimension with the publication of the Qur’ān, so that Bibliander’s “Protestant” project would soon be censored and banned by various Catholic authorities.¹¹ Arguments very similar to Bibliander’s would be advanced during the second half of the seventeenth century in England, and again, Islam would prove “good to think with” in these polemics; a tool that would enable both traditionalists and radicals better to define their positions.

Two curious instances of this use of Islam within Christian polemic would come about in the same year.¹² Johann Albrecht von Widmanstetter published a summary of Robert of Ketton’s translation joined with a polemical dialogue about Muhammad under the title Mahometis Abdallae filii theologia dialogo explicata. Widmanstetter imposed a polemical framework on summaries of the Toledan Collection that were circulating in manuscript by the late 1530s, with a view to providing the Catholic reader with a use...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1. Translators and Translations of the Qur’ān
• 2. Sale, Marracci, and the Representation of Islam
• 3. Translating Christ and Christianity
• 4. Voltaire: Muhammad and Moses, Opposition and Identification
• 5. Rousseau and the Language of the Legislator
• 6. Savary, Napoleon, and Egypt: Visions of Prophecy and Conquest
• 7. Goethe: Poetry and Prophecy, from Mahomet to World Literature
• Afterword
• Endnotes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Index of Qur’ānic Verses