The Construction and Reconstruction of the Qur’an’s Meaning Through Translation
The Construction and Reconstruction of the Qur’an’s Meaning Through Translation
Johanna Pink, GloQur, Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg, Germany
IQSA International Conference 2021 “Giorgio La Pira” Library, Palermo, Italy
Panel 8. Qur’an Translation and its Exegetical Dimension: Transfers and Transformations
Translation is often understood as the transfer of meaning from one language to another. In reality, though, it can be more aptly described as an attempt to reconstruct the source text’s meaning in a different linguistic, historical, and cultural context. In the case of the Qur’an, the gap between the milieus of source text and target language is so big that quite frequently, the translator is led to construct new meaning – building on exegetical traditions, interpretive intent, or the perceived needs of the target audience. This paper aims to conceptualize the process of meaning-creation in Qur’an translation, based on a range of case studies from translations in different languages. It shows how Qur’an translations may narrow down the source text’s meaning, expand it, or transform it, and what rationales inform their choices. Particular attention will be paid to the use of interpretive sources from the fields of lexicography and exegesis, setting the stage for the subsequent presentations.
Congratulations to IQSA Board Members Johanna Pink and Holger Zellentin
We are proud to announce that on December 10, 2019, IQSA board members Johanna Pink and Holger Zellentin each received a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC) for research projects in the field of Qur’anic Studies. ERC Consolidator Grants provide around two million euros over a period of five years to a researcher, allowing them to establish a team dedicated to a specified project. These awards are among the most prestigious research grants in Europe.
In her ERC funded project “The Global Qur’an“ (GloQur),Johanna Pink will be researching the international dimension of Qur’an translations, which have become established as a key medium of Muslim religious practice all over the world since the early 20th century. She will be studying international connections in this field on two levels. First, she will investigate the institutional actors who produce Qur’an translations in many different languages for an international audience. These actors are primarily nation states like Saudi Arabia and Iran, as well as missionary communities such as the Ahmadiyya. Second, she will analyze the complex history and spread of Qur’an translations into the languages of former colonial empires: in other words, English, French, and Russian. Based on this analysis, Pink will address the question of how discussions about interpretation are reflected in the various Qur’an translations – for example, regarding gender, the status of non-Muslims, and the idea of God. She will also be researching how the language, location, producers, and target audiences influence these debates. For example, what happens when a Mauritanian sheikh is commissioned by a Saudi institution to produce a French Qur’an translation? And will that translation be interpreted and received differently by Muslims in France than by French-speaking Muslims in Senegal?
The project led by Holger Zellentin is titled “The Qur’an as a Source for Late Antiquity” (QaSLA). QaSLA’s main innovation consists in turning the table on the predominant hermeneutics of Western approaches to the Qur’an, which tend to focus on the question of how the Qur’an is influenced by Judaism and Christianity. By taxonomizing the religious profiles reflected in the demonstrable interface between the Qur’an and its Jewish and Christian contemporaries, the project first will reorient and then revamp this approach. QaSLA initially analyses the affinity between the Qur’an and known forms of Judaism and Christianity surrounding Arabia in order to identify which biblical, exegetical, homiletic, legal, narrative, ritual, and poetic discourses and practices circulated within the peninsula. It then employs the Qur’an as a new vantage point from which to reconsider broader late antique religious trends across the Middle East. QaSLA combines expertise across disciplines to create a novel local Arabian and an enhanced longitudinal Middle Eastern understanding of Rabbinic Jewish and Syriac, Ethiopic and Arabic Christian cultures. In a final step, the project then returns to portray the Qur’an in sharper contradistinction to more clearly defined forms of Judaism and Christianity.
Once again, IQSA extends a hearty congratulations to Professors Pink and Zellentin and wishes them much success in their research.
New Publication by Johanna Pink, “Muslim Qurʾānic Interpretation Today: Media, Genealogies and Interpretive Communities”
Johanna Pink’s latest book, Muslim Qur’ānic Interpretation Today: Media, Genealogies, and Interpretive Communities (Sheffield: Equinox Publishing Ltd, 2019) is now out! IQSA readers can claim 25% off using the code QURAN when ordering directly from Equinox.
Muslim Qurʾānic interpretation today is beset by tensions: tensions between localising and globalising forces; tensions between hierarchical and egalitarian social ideals; tensions between the quest for new approaches and the claim for authority raised by defenders of exegetical traditions. It is this complex web of power structures, local as well as global, that this book seeks to elucidate.
This book provides a fresh perspective on present-day Qurʾānic interpretations by analysing the historical, social and political dimensions in which they take place, the ways in which they are performed and the media through which they are transmitted. Besides discussing the persistence of exegetical traditions and the emergence of new paradigms, it examines the structural conditions in which theseprocesses occur. Languages, nation states, global human rights discourses and intra-Islamic divisions all shape the nature of interpretive endeavours and frequently fuel conflicts over the correct understanding of the Qurʾān.
The book contains more than twenty detailed case studies of recent Qurʾānic interpretations, based on translated texts that cover a variety of languages, regions, media, genres, approaches, authors and target groups. They are integrated into the chapters, bring their arguments to life and stimulate fundamental reflections on the authority of the text and the authority of its interpreters.
Brett Wilson, Associate Professor of History, Central European University, gave this review:
This is an ambitious book that asks trenchant questions about Qur’anic interpretation in the contemporary world. Given the massive production of such texts around the globe in the past two decades, it is a very welcome and much needed contribution to the field of Qur’anic studies. It is to be praised for its breadth in that it explores a broad array of interpretations in various geographies, languages, and media, providing – better than any other book – a map of the very terrain of recent Qur’anic exegesis as well as an incisive examination of the debates, traditions, and power-structures that shape it. Without question, this book will be an invaluable resource for scholars, students, and curious minds for years to come.
The full table of contents can also be accessed here courtesy of the University of Freiburg.
About the Author: Johanna Pink is Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Freiburg and a member of the IQSA Board of Directors.
* Text and image accessed and reproduced by kind permission of Equinox Publishing: https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/muslim-quranic-interpretation/
In the latest installment of the Review of Qur’anic Research (Vol. 4, no.9), Johanna Pink (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg) reviews Kristian Petersen’s Interpreting Islam in China: Pilgrimage, Scripture, & Language in the Han Kitab (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017).
In her review, Pink writes… “Some readers of the Review of Qurʾanic Research might wonder whether a book on Islam in China is worth their attention. It most definitely is, especially if their interest transcends the Qurʾānic text itself and extends to Muslims’ engagement with their sacred scripture. As the author of Interpreting Islam in China, Kristian Petersen, rightfully criticizes, “much of Western scholarship has associated Islam very closely, and at times even exclusively, with Arab Muslims in the Middle East—often establishing essentialized orientations of the center and the periphery” (3)… It is therefore highly advisable especially for scholars who have no expertise on Islam in China to take his book seriously as a contribution to our understanding of how the Qurʾān was read and interpreted by Muslims throughout history, across space and language divides…”
Want to read more? For full access to the Review of Qur’anic Research (RQR), members can log in HERE. Not an IQSA member? Join today to enjoy RQR and additional member benefits!
In the latest installment of the Review of Qur’anic Research (Vol. 4, no.5), Vanessa De Gifis (Wayne State University) reviews Tafsīr and Islamic Intellectual History (London: Oxford University Press/Institute of Ismaili Studies, 2014), a collection of studies edited by Andreas Görke and Johanna Pink. In this volume, Görke and Pink pose an essential inquiry about tafsīr: “What kind of disciplinary, dogmatic, sectarian, chronological or regional boundaries are there, how are they affirmed and how are they permeated, transgressed, or shifted?” (11). The overall claim of TIIH is that a variety of criteria may be useful to make sense of the external (definitional) and internal (taxonomical) boundaries of tafsīr, contingent upon the particular aspects of qurʾānic interpretation with which researchers are concerned.
In the latest installment of the Review of Qur’anic Research, Johanna Pink (Albert-Ludwigs-Universität, Freiburg) reviews The Qur’an and Its Readers Worldwide edited by Suha Taji-Farouki (Oxford University Press, 2015). This volume presents readers with an unprecedented broad perspective on the global field of Muslim qurʾānic exegesis. It brings together ten chapters that bear witness to exegetical approaches from all over the world: Bosnia, Turkey, South Asia, Indonesia, Iran, Egypt, the U.S., East Africa, Germany, and China. Consequently, it contains examples from Muslim majority societies as well as diasporic communities from the early twentieth century to the present.
In the latest installment of Review of Qur’anic Research 1, no. 8, Johanna Pink reviews M. Brett Wilson’s new book, Translating the Qurʾan in an Age of Nationalism: Print Culture and Modern Islam in Turkey (Oxford University Press, 2014). At the dawn of the twentieth century, many Muslims considered Qur’an translations to be impermissible and unviable. Nevertheless, printed and translated versions of the Qur’an have gained widespread acceptance by Muslim communities, and now play a central, and in some quarters, a leading role in how the Qur’an is read and understood in the modern world. Focusing on the Ottoman Empire and Turkey, and following the debates to Russia, Egypt, Indonesia, and India, Wilson’s book tries to answer the question of how this revolution in Qur’anic book culture occurred, considering both intellectual history as well the processes by which the Qur’an became a modern book that could be mechanically reproduced and widely owned.
For a long time, Qur’an translations have attracted little scholarly attention. Wilson’s book reflects growing interest among scholars to study such texts and the reasons and circumstances of their production, which can help to shed light on the place of the Qur’an in the lives of those who engage with it in different non-Arabic languages.
Full access to the Review of Qur’anic Research (RQR)is available in the members-only area of our IQSA website. Not an IQSA member? Join today to enjoy RQR and additional member benefits!
Book review: Aims, Methods and Contexts of Qurʾanic Exegesis
By Gabriel Said Reynolds
Aims, Methods and Contexts of Qurʾanic Exegesis (2nd/8th-9th/15th C.), ed. Karen Bauer. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013.
A principal goal of the International Qurʾanic Studies Association (IQSA) is to encourage scholarship on the Qurʾanic text and its relationship to the historical, religious, and literary context of Late Antiquity. The interest of IQSA in fostering such scholarship is in part a response to the manner in which the academic study of the Qurʾan is often approached through the lens of tafsir. This approach has not done justice to the text of the Qurʾan. It also does not do justice to tafsir, a science that deserves to be studied for its own sake and not only as an accessory to the study of the Qurʾan. In this light the publication of a major volume dedicated to the study of tafsīr, entitled Aims, Methods and Contexts of Qurʾanic Exegesis (2nd/8th-9th/15th C.) and edited by Karen Bauer, is an auspicious development (as will be the forthcoming publication of Tafsir and Intellectual History, edited by Andreas Görke and Johanna Pink).
Aims, Methods and Contexts of Qurʾanic Exegesis, a work based on papers delivered at a 2009 conference at the Institute of Ismaili Studies in London, opens with a clear and compelling introduction by Bauer and is followed by thirteen chapters of almost universally high quality. Bauer divides the articles not by chronology but by theme, into three principal sections: “The Aims of Tafsir,” “Methods and Sources of Tafsir,” and “Contextualising Tafsir.” The work—which includes new editions of Arabic texts in the articles of Walid Saleh and Suleiman Mourad—concludes with a detailed index of Qurʾanic verses, a general index, and a global bibliography.
Here, instead of a comprehensive book review, I would like to draw attention to some highlights in Bauer’s volume. (I’ve also included a complete table of contents below). Among the most interesting contributions in Aims, Methods and Contexts of Qurʾanic Exegesis are those by Bauer herself, both the Introduction and the second chapter: “Justifying the Genre: A Study of Introductions to Classical Works of Tafsir.” In the Introduction Bauer convincingly argues that the science of tafsir is as much about the world of the mufassir as it is about the text of the Qurʾan:
At its essence, tafsir is each scholar’s attempt to relate his world to the world of the Qurʾan; it is his attempt to relate his intellectual, political and social contexts to the Qurʾan’s text. It is a process of meaning-creation, because what the scholars read into the text is not always explicitly there. (p. 8)
In some ways this argument sets the tone for the entire volume, as different scholars show how different mufassirun create meaning, and how their attempts to do so reflect their particular contexts and personalities. Following Walid Saleh’s detailed study and edition of the introduction to al-Wahidi’s Qurʾan commentary al-Basit, Suleiman Mourad presents an examination of the introduction to the Muʿtazili tafsir of al-Hakim al-Jishumi (“Towards a Reconstruction of the Muʿtazili Tradition of Qurʾanic Exegesis,” ch. 4). Mourad stresses the way in which al-Jishumi uses his tafsir as an arena (or, to use Mourad’s terminology, a “battlefield”) in which to refute the doctrines of the Muʿtazila’s opponents.
In his article (“Early Shiʿi Hermeneutics: Some Exegetical Techniques Attributed to the Shiʿi Imams”), Robert Gleave explores the way in which certain Shiʿite mufassirun attribute interpretations to the imams. Gleave categorizes these interpretations according to certain exegetical techniques in order to identify what is distinctive in this particular exegetical genre. Andrew Rippin (“The Construction of the Arabian Historical Context”) asks how much of what is generally assumed to be the Arabian historical background of the Qurʾan—even its Arabic language—is a construction of the mufassirun. To this end Rippin comments: “What we have is an interpretational context conveyed in a linguistic, social convention known as ‘Arabic,’ tied to a specifically imagined time and place that ends up being subject to generalisation across the text” (pp. 183-84)
The focus of Martin Nguyen (“Letter by Letter: Tracing the Textual Genealogy of a Sufi Tafsir”)is instead on one particular tafsir, the Laṭaʾif al-isharat of Abu l-Qasim al-Qushayri (d. 465/1072). Whereas Qushayri’s work is often labelled as a “mystical” tafsir, Nguyen shows that this label is simplistic, as the Laṭaʾif al-isharat also reflects the particular trends of Qurʾanic interpretation that were present in Qushayri’s context in Nishapur. While Nguyen’s article presents tafsir as a coherent science with distinct boundaries, Tariq Jaffer’s article (“Fakhr al-Din al-Razi’s System of Inquiry”) highlights the influence of philosophy and theology in Fakhr al-Din al-Razi’s monumental commentary. He thereby shows that in certain cases the boundaries of tafsir are fluid, and indeed that particular tafsirs can be something like compendia of different sciences.
Perhaps the most impressive contributions to Aims, Methods and Contexts of Qurʾanic Exegesis are the two which make up its final section. Claude Gilliot (“A Schoolmaster, Storyteller, Exegete and Warrior at Work in Khurasan: al-Dahhak b. Muzahim al-Hilali (d. 106/724)”) provides a detailed and meticulously documented examination of the exegetical material attributed to al-Dahhak, and the varied (and at times ambiguous or conflicting) traditions on his biography. Michael Pregill (“Methodologies for the Dating of Exegetical Works and Traditions”) examines a text often known (and indeed published) under the title of Tafsir Ibn ʿAbbas. Pregill shows, with reference to the scholarship of Andrew Rippin and others, that the attribution to Ibn ʿAbbas is without basis, as is Wansbrough’s attribution of this text to al-Kalbi. Instead, Pregill contends, this work should be identified with a tafsir entitled al-Wadih, compiled by ʿAbdallah b. al-Mubarak al-Dinawari (d. 308/920). In addition, Pregill convincingly argues through a series of case studies that this text has a distinctive relationship with early works such as Tafsir Muqatil, even if it shares the formal traits of later madrasa style tafsirs. Thus it is a text that “defies easy categorization” (p. 432).
The same might be said for the work in which Pregill’s article is found. The articles in Aims, Methods and Contexts of Qurʾanic Exegesis cover a diverse range of subjects, and are of various sorts, from textual editions, to theoretical reflections, to focused studies on particular works. Together, however, they form an impressive body of scholarship on tafsir. Indeed this volume might serve as a foundation for the development of a distinctive academic field of tafsir studies.
Aims, Methods and contexts of Qur’anic exegesis (2nd/8th-9th/15th C)
Table of Contents
Notes on contributors, XI-XIV.
Bauer (Karen), Introduction, 1-16.
Section I; The aims of tafsir 1. Hamza (Feras), Tafsir and unlocking the historical Qur’an: Back to basics?
19-37
2. Bauer (Karen), Justifying the genre: A study of introductions to Classical works of tafsir, 39-65
3. Saleh (Walid A.),The introduction of Wahidi’s al-Basit: An edition, translation and commentary, 67-100
4. Mourad (Suleiman), Towards a reconstruction of the Mu’tazili tradition of Qur’anic exegesis: Reading the introduction of the Tahdhib of al-Hakim al-Jishumi (d. 494/1101)and its application, 101-137.
Section II.Methods and sources of tafsir. 5. Gleave (Robert), Early Shi’i hermeneutics:Some exegetical techniques attributed to the Shi’i Imams, 141-172.
6. Rippin (Andrew), The construction of the Arabian historical context in Muslim interpretation of the Qur’an 173-198
7. Tottoli (Roberto), Methods and contexts in the use of hadiths and traditions in classical tafsir literature: The exegesis of Q. 21:85and Q. 17:1, 199-215
8. Ngyuen (Martin), Letter by letter: Tracing the textual genealogy of a sufi tafsir, 217-240
9. Jaffer (Tariq), Fakhr al-Din al-Razi’s system of inquiry: Doubt and the transmission of knowledge, 241-261
10. Zamah (Ludmila), Master of the obvious: understanding zahir interpretations in Qur’anic exegesis, 263-276.
11. Burge (Stephen), Jalal al-Din al-Suyuti, the Mu’awwidhatan and the Modes of Exegesis, 277-310.
Section III. Contextualising tafsir
12. Gilliot (Claude), A schoolmaster, storyteller, exegete and warrior at work in Khurasan: al-Dahhak b. Muzahim al-Hilali (d. 106/724), 311-392.
13. Pregill (Michael E.), Methodologies for the dating of exegetical works and traditions: Can the lost tafsir of al-Kalbi be recovered from Tafsir Ibn Abbas (also known as al-Wadih)?, 393-453
In her ERC funded project “The Global Qur’an“ (GloQur),
Muslim Qurʾānic interpretation today is beset by tensions: tensions between localising and globalising forces; tensions between hierarchical and egalitarian social ideals; tensions between the quest for new approaches and the claim for authority raised by defenders of exegetical traditions. It is this complex web of power structures, local as well as global, that this book seeks to elucidate.
About the Author: Johanna Pink is Professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Freiburg and a member of the 
