Basic HTML Version
The Islamic Bulletin
Volume XX No. 26
Page 5
with a sensitivity that was not unlike Jefferson’s own
emerging attitudes. Entitled
The Koran; commonly called
the Alcoran of Mohammed
, it was prepared by the
Englishman George Sale and published in 1734 in London.
A second edition was printed in 1764, and it was this
edition that Jefferson bought. Like Jefferson, Sale was a
lawyer, although his heart lay in oriental scholarship. In the
preface to his translation, he
lamented that the work “was
carried on at leisure time only,
and amidst the necessary
avocations of a troublesome
profession.” This preface also
informed the reader of Sale’s
motives: “If the religious and
civil Institutions of foreign
nations are worth our knowledge,
those of Mohammed, the
lawgiver of the Arabians, and founder of an empire which
in less than a century spread itself over a greater part of
the world than the Romans were ever masters of, must
needs be so.” Like Pufendorf, Sale stressed Muhammad’s
role as a “lawgiver” and the Qur’an as an example of a
distinct legal tradition.
This is not to say that Sale’s translation is free of
the kind of prejudices against Muslims that characterize
most European works on Islam of this period. However,
Sale did not stoop to the kinds of affronts that tend to fill
the pages of earlier such attempts at translation. To the
contrary, Sale felt himself obliged to treat “with common
decency, and even to approve such particulars as seemed to
me to deserve approbation.” In keeping with this commitment,
Sale described the Prophet of Islam as “richly furnished with
personal endowments, beautiful in person, of a subtle wit,
agreeable behaviour, showing liberality to the poor, courtesy to
everyone, fortitude against his enemies, and, above all, a high
reverence for the name of God.” This portrayal is markedly
different from those of earlier translators, whose primary
motive was to assert the superiority of Christianity.
In addition to the relative liberality of Sale’s approach,
he also surpassed earlier writers in the quality of his translation.
Previous English versions of the Qur’an were not based on the
original Arabic, but rather on Latin or French versions, a process
that layered fresh mistakes upon the errors of their sources.
Sale, by contrast, worked from the Arabic text. It was not true,
as Voltaire claimed in his famous
Dictionnaire philosophique
of
1764, that
le savant Sale
had acquired his Arabic skills by
having lived for 25 years among Arabs; rather, Sale had
learnt the language through his involvement in preparing an
Arabic translation of the New Testament to be used by
Syrian Christians, a project that was underwritten by the
Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge in London.
Studying alongside Arab scholars who had come to London
to assist in this work, he acquired within a few years such
good command of the language that he was able to serve as
a proofreader of the Arabic text.
“In this Qur’an, We have put forward all kinds of
illustrations for people, so that they may take heed—an Arabic
Qur’an, free from any distortion.” That quotation from Surah
39, Verses 27-28, of the Qur’an was rendered into English by
Muhammad A. S. Abdel Haleem, Professor of Islamic Studies
at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. It
emphasizes a basic yet far-reaching fact about the holy book
of Islam: It was received and recorded in the Arabic
language. Muslims believe that the Qur’an is inseparable
from the language in which it was revealed, and for this
reason, all Muslims worldwide recite it in Arabic, even
though today the vast majority of Muslims are neither Arabs
nor native speakers of Arabic. Many Muslims also regard the
eloquence of the Qur’an as evidence of its divine
provenance. A popular story recounts how, in the time of
Muhammad, the most famous poet of Makkah converted to
Islam after reading one of its verses, convinced that no
human could ever produce a work of such beauty.
Sale turned from translating the holy text of Christians
into Arabic to rendering the holy text of Muslims into his native
English. Noting the absence of a reliable English translation, he
aimed to provide a “more genuine idea of the original.” Lest his
readers be unduly daunted, he justified his choice of fidelity to
the original by stating that “we must not expect to read a version
of so extraordinary a book with the same ease and pleasure as a
modern composition.” Indeed, even though Sale’s English may
appear overwrought today, there is no denying that he strove to
convey some of the beauty and poetry of the original Arabic.
An inscription inside the Jefferson Memorial in
Washington, D.C. quotes Jefferson’s 1777 statute on religious
pluralism that inspired the constitutional right that “no religious
Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or
public Trust.”
Sale’s aspiration to provide an accurate rendition of the
Qur’an was matched by his desire also to provide his readers
with a more honest introduction to Islam. This “Preliminary
Discourse,” as he entitled it, runs to more than 200 pages in the
edition Jefferson purchased. But did reading the Qur’an
influence Thomas Jefferson? That question is difficult to answer,
because the few scattered references he made to it in his
writings do not reveal his views. Though it may have sparked in
him a desire to learn the Arabic language (during the 1770’s
Jefferson purchased a number of Arabic grammars), it is far more
significant that it may have reinforced his commitment to
religious freedom. Two examples support this idea.
In 1777, the year after he drafted the Declaration of
Independence, Jefferson was tasked with excising colonial
legacies from Virginia’s legal code. As part of this undertaking, he
drafted a bill for the establishment of religious freedom, which
was enacted in 1786. In his autobiography, Jefferson recounted
his strong desire that the bill not only should extend to Christians
of all denominations but should also include “within the mantle
of its protection, the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and
Mahometan [Muslim], the Hindoo, and infidel of every
denomination.”
This all-encompassing attitude to religious pluralism was
by no means universally shared by Jefferson’s contemporaries. As
the historian Robert Allison documents, many American writers
and statesmen in the late 18th century made reference to Islam
for less salutary aims. Armed with tendentious translations and
often grossly distorted accounts, they portrayed Islam as
embodying the very dangers of tyranny and despotism that the
young republic had just overcome. Allison argues that many
American politicians who used “the Muslim world as a reference
point for their own society were not concerned with historical
truth or with an accurate description of Islam, but rather with this
description’s political convenience.”
“The style of the Koran is generally beautiful and fluent,
especially where it imitates the prophetic manner, and scripture
phrases. It is concise, and often obscure, adorned with bold
figures after the eastern taste, enlivened with florid and
Continued on page 25