The Qur'an
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Recorded or compiled by others
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~200,000 words · 928 passages
Cite this work
- APAQuran. (n.d.). The Qur'an. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/quran/the-qur-an
- MLAQuran. The Qur'an. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/quran/the-qur-an.
- ChicagoQuran. The Qur'an. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/quran/the-qur-an.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The hundred and fourteen suras of the Qur'an in English translation.
Context and history
One thing must be said before anything else: for Islam the Qur'an is the Arabic text, and a translation is not the Qur'an but an interpretation of its meaning. This is not a formality: it is why Muslim editions are usually titled 'the meaning of' and why the Arabic is printed alongside. This version is here for the reader; for any question about the text the reference is the Arabic, and citation is always by sura and aya, never by page.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
There is, however, apart from its religious value, a more general view from which the book should be considered. The Koran enjoys the distinction of having been the starting-point of a new literary and philosophical movement which has powerfully affected the finest and most cultivated minds among both Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages. This general progress of the Muhammedan world has somehow been arrested, but research has shown that what European scholars knew of Greek philosophy, of mathematics, astronomy, and like sciences, for several centuries before the Renaissance, was, roughly speaking, all derived from Latin treatises ultimately based on Arabic originals; and it was the Koran which, though indirectly, gave the first impetus to these studies among the Arabs and their allies. Linguistic investigations, poetry, and other branches of literature, also made their appearance soon after or simultaneously with the publication of the Koran; and the literary movement thus initiated has resulted in some of the finest products of genius and learning. The style in which the Koran is written requires some special attention in this introduction. The literary form is for the most part different from anything else we know. In its finest passages we indeed seem to hear a voice akin to that of the ancient Hebrew prophets, but there is much in the book which Europeans usually regard as faulty. The tendency to repetition which is an inherent characteristic of the Semitic mind appears here in an exaggerated form, and there is in addition much in the Koran which strikes us as wild and fantastic. The most unfavourable criticism ever passed on Muhammed's style has in fact been penned by the prophet's greatest British admirer, Carlyle himself; and there are probably many now who find themselves in the same dilemma with that great writer.