Al-Qur’an

Ahmed Ali’s book is a much welcome addition to the multiple editions nowavailable of Islam’s holy book in English rendition. As the dust jacket informsus, this translation of the Qur’an’s meaning was first published in the UnitedStates in 1988. Now reprinted and handsomely reproduced in a handy size,these factors and its esthetics and readability make this volume suitable forgeneral and classroom use. Educators who wish to assign a good translationof the Qur’an’s meaning, particularly for undergraduates, will find this workan obvious choice out of the plethora of choices currently available.Ali’s work avoids the linguistic archaism of Muhammad MarmadukePickthall’s otherwise excellent rendition, jarring to the ears of a typical 20-year-old today reared on television English. A. J. Arberry’s translation, celebratedfor its lyrical richness and its being supposedly (but not quite)evocative of the Arabic original, is stilted in parts and even inaccurate onoccasion. When I assigned it for my undergraduate class on Islam a fewyears ago, at times I had to stop and disentangle the occasional fracturedsyntax for my students and reconstruct the original Arabic in my mind toextricate the literal meaning, sometimes sacrificed for literary effect.My next choice was T. B. Irving’s rendition of the Qur’an’s meaning intowhat he called American English. Although largely accurate, the rendition’spedestrian nature, which bordered on the colloquial, was disappointinglyinadequate to the task. Although the meaning was clear, the majesty of transcendentalverbum dei was not evoked. N. J. Dawood’s widely used renditionis certainly adequate, but the prose is occasionally limp and uninspiring, andthus unsatisfying at a deeper level.Ali’s work straddles a happy medium between contemporaneity instyle and elegance of diction, both achieved without any sacrifice in ...