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The Koran
- GenresReligionPhilosophy
Paperback
Published January 1, 2003
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About the author
N.J. Dawood
23 books18 followersNessim Joseph Dawood (Arabic: نعيم جوزيف داوود) was born in 1927 in Baghdad, Iraq. He emigrated to England in 1945 as an Iraq State scholar, and settled there. He graduated from the University of London. He is known for his English translations of the Qur’an, Tales from the One Thousand and One Nights (Penguin Classics) and his edition of the Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun. (from Wikipedia).
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 22, 2020
I'm not religious, and it hasn't changed my mind, but it's a nice read. If you are not into religion, keep your opinion of it to yourself, and don't refrain from reading this or any other text out of lack of interest or because you don't see the point. It has nice imagery and a message of doing good, with the inevitable bad that comes with very old texts explaining how to live your life. I recommend it either way
January 6, 2022
This is a rating and review of the translation, not the content of the Qur'an. As a Muslim, I naturally hold it to be the infallible word of God and so beyond rating.
I came upon this book in a used book store and was surprised by it, as I had never heard mention an N. J. Dawood translation before. I flicked through it and was intrigued by the author's decision to depart from the orthodox ordering of the Qur'an in favour of a seemingly arbitrary 'Biblical' ordering. He acknowledges that a chronological ordering is pretty much impossible due to the way the Qur'an's surahs (chapters) were put together (in accordance with the Prophet Mohammad's (saw) guidance, I should add.)
I was initially unconcerned by this and bought the book anyway, but on later reflection I thought the author's ordering choice a serious error - even if one were to reject the Islamic belief that the Qur'an is the word of God, there should at the very least be some sort of respect for a text's ordering; in the same way we would respect any human author's decision to order the chapters of a book he or she had written. While the author thought that by this ordering he was making it easier on the uninitiated reader, I personally found it confusing at best when putting myself in the shoes of someone who had never before read the Qur'an. Jumping right into descriptions of the Day of Judgement and its signs certainly does that. When we turn to the orthodox ordering, which starts with the Fatihah (or Exordium as translated here) and then what the author terms the 'mundane' surah of al-Baqarah (the Cow here), the reader is addressed directly along with what the book is and what it calls to: "This Book is not to be doubted. It is a guide for the righteous, who have faith in the unseen and are steadfast in prayer; who bestow in charity a part of what We have given them; who trust what has been revealed to you and to others before you, and firmly believe in the life to come. These are rightly guided by their Lord; these shall surely triumph." The 'uninitiated' reader will not reach these key verses until page 334 of my copy of this translation. Given the fact that this chapter very quickly goes into the creation of humanity (the story of Adam and Eve) it strikes me that the author erred even by his own standard of ordering. I cannot fathom why he chose to begin with surahs about the Day of Judgement and its signs, which effectively throws a reader in at the deep end.
With matters of ordering aside, I can turn to the translation itself. I am an Arabic speaker and am familiar with the Qur'an in Arabic, so it is by this standard that I judge the author's choices. I may also refer to other translations to illustrate some of my contentions. Jarred by the author's ordering, I naturally flicked through the book to page 334 and decided to restart from there, following the traditional ordering. Here, Alif Lam Mim is translated phonetically as these verses are beyond human understanding. This is correct and most respectable translations abide by that. It would have been helpful, perhaps, if the author placed an explanatory note about this - I checked elsewhere in the text and he does not do so for any other verses of this nature. The uninitiated reader would certainly have benefited from that, I think. Moving on to the second verse, we immediately stumble on an issue. The author translates is as follows: "This Book is not to be doubted. It is a guide for the righteous..." It may seem a small issue, but the author places a full stop here. As someone familiar with the Arabic, this was immediately jarring to me and raised problems as far as meaning goes. I checked ten other translations and have found that none of them place a full stop here. The reason against a full stop is exegetical in nature and so I will not go into it. In addition, "This Book is not to be doubted..." comes across as dogmatic and a call to not doubt or think, when a closer and more accurate translation would make clear that: "This Book has no doubt in it...", "This is the Book which contains no doubt...", "This is the Book about which there is no doubt..." etc.
There are other points of contention - for instance, at 2:21 he translates 'naas' - which means people - to 'Men'. Other translations go with humanity, mankind, and people to clarify that it is the human race that is being addressed. In the same paragraph he translates 'firaash' as 'bed' and 'binaa' as 'dome', and while the former is acceptable the latter is a tad objectionable. Others go with roof or ceiling, but the closest rendering is Abdul Haleem's, "who spread out the earth for you and built the sky..."
I will satisfy myself with one last example, which I personally thought was egregious. At 2:23 the author translates the verse as follows: "If you doubt what We have revealed to Our servant, produce one chapter comparable to this Book. Call upon your idols to assist you, if what you say be true." Now, this is a key verse in the Qur'an, as it is an eternal challenge to mankind: if you doubt that the Qur'an is divine, then produce something like it. The author's decision to use the term 'idol' here is at complete odds with the Arabic, where we find the term 'shuhadaa', which has been better translated elsewhere as 'witnesses', 'helpers', 'supporters'. The term 'idols' is 'asnaam' in Arabic and has been used elsewhere in the Qur'an, so its use here is at clear odds with what is being conveyed.
I personally enjoy reading many different translations of the Qur'an, and so I am quite happy to have come across this translation, and will no doubt turn to it again and again in the future, but I do not recommend it at all to anyone who is simply curious about the Qur'an or Islam and is trying to find a copy that will sate their curiosity. You will be doing yourself and this text - which without a doubt changed the course of human history and produced one of humanity's great civilisations - an enormous disservice. I would recommend you turn to a more mainstream translation, such as the Abdul Haleem translation mentioned above. If you are already familiar with the Qur'an in translation or even in Arabic and are interested in translation and the history of Qur'anic translations into English, then there is probably no harm in adding this book to your collection so long as you keep in mind its shortcomings as a translation.
I came upon this book in a used book store and was surprised by it, as I had never heard mention an N. J. Dawood translation before. I flicked through it and was intrigued by the author's decision to depart from the orthodox ordering of the Qur'an in favour of a seemingly arbitrary 'Biblical' ordering. He acknowledges that a chronological ordering is pretty much impossible due to the way the Qur'an's surahs (chapters) were put together (in accordance with the Prophet Mohammad's (saw) guidance, I should add.)
I was initially unconcerned by this and bought the book anyway, but on later reflection I thought the author's ordering choice a serious error - even if one were to reject the Islamic belief that the Qur'an is the word of God, there should at the very least be some sort of respect for a text's ordering; in the same way we would respect any human author's decision to order the chapters of a book he or she had written. While the author thought that by this ordering he was making it easier on the uninitiated reader, I personally found it confusing at best when putting myself in the shoes of someone who had never before read the Qur'an. Jumping right into descriptions of the Day of Judgement and its signs certainly does that. When we turn to the orthodox ordering, which starts with the Fatihah (or Exordium as translated here) and then what the author terms the 'mundane' surah of al-Baqarah (the Cow here), the reader is addressed directly along with what the book is and what it calls to: "This Book is not to be doubted. It is a guide for the righteous, who have faith in the unseen and are steadfast in prayer; who bestow in charity a part of what We have given them; who trust what has been revealed to you and to others before you, and firmly believe in the life to come. These are rightly guided by their Lord; these shall surely triumph." The 'uninitiated' reader will not reach these key verses until page 334 of my copy of this translation. Given the fact that this chapter very quickly goes into the creation of humanity (the story of Adam and Eve) it strikes me that the author erred even by his own standard of ordering. I cannot fathom why he chose to begin with surahs about the Day of Judgement and its signs, which effectively throws a reader in at the deep end.
With matters of ordering aside, I can turn to the translation itself. I am an Arabic speaker and am familiar with the Qur'an in Arabic, so it is by this standard that I judge the author's choices. I may also refer to other translations to illustrate some of my contentions. Jarred by the author's ordering, I naturally flicked through the book to page 334 and decided to restart from there, following the traditional ordering. Here, Alif Lam Mim is translated phonetically as these verses are beyond human understanding. This is correct and most respectable translations abide by that. It would have been helpful, perhaps, if the author placed an explanatory note about this - I checked elsewhere in the text and he does not do so for any other verses of this nature. The uninitiated reader would certainly have benefited from that, I think. Moving on to the second verse, we immediately stumble on an issue. The author translates is as follows: "This Book is not to be doubted. It is a guide for the righteous..." It may seem a small issue, but the author places a full stop here. As someone familiar with the Arabic, this was immediately jarring to me and raised problems as far as meaning goes. I checked ten other translations and have found that none of them place a full stop here. The reason against a full stop is exegetical in nature and so I will not go into it. In addition, "This Book is not to be doubted..." comes across as dogmatic and a call to not doubt or think, when a closer and more accurate translation would make clear that: "This Book has no doubt in it...", "This is the Book which contains no doubt...", "This is the Book about which there is no doubt..." etc.
There are other points of contention - for instance, at 2:21 he translates 'naas' - which means people - to 'Men'. Other translations go with humanity, mankind, and people to clarify that it is the human race that is being addressed. In the same paragraph he translates 'firaash' as 'bed' and 'binaa' as 'dome', and while the former is acceptable the latter is a tad objectionable. Others go with roof or ceiling, but the closest rendering is Abdul Haleem's, "who spread out the earth for you and built the sky..."
I will satisfy myself with one last example, which I personally thought was egregious. At 2:23 the author translates the verse as follows: "If you doubt what We have revealed to Our servant, produce one chapter comparable to this Book. Call upon your idols to assist you, if what you say be true." Now, this is a key verse in the Qur'an, as it is an eternal challenge to mankind: if you doubt that the Qur'an is divine, then produce something like it. The author's decision to use the term 'idol' here is at complete odds with the Arabic, where we find the term 'shuhadaa', which has been better translated elsewhere as 'witnesses', 'helpers', 'supporters'. The term 'idols' is 'asnaam' in Arabic and has been used elsewhere in the Qur'an, so its use here is at clear odds with what is being conveyed.
I personally enjoy reading many different translations of the Qur'an, and so I am quite happy to have come across this translation, and will no doubt turn to it again and again in the future, but I do not recommend it at all to anyone who is simply curious about the Qur'an or Islam and is trying to find a copy that will sate their curiosity. You will be doing yourself and this text - which without a doubt changed the course of human history and produced one of humanity's great civilisations - an enormous disservice. I would recommend you turn to a more mainstream translation, such as the Abdul Haleem translation mentioned above. If you are already familiar with the Qur'an in translation or even in Arabic and are interested in translation and the history of Qur'anic translations into English, then there is probably no harm in adding this book to your collection so long as you keep in mind its shortcomings as a translation.
February 12, 2020
The only people who believe that Islam and Christianity serve the same god have never read the Koran and don't read the bible. Whereas the New Testament set God's people free from the laws, the Koran enslaves them back. Whereas the New Testament taught forgiveness and turning the other cheek, the Koran teaches that if people don't accept your message it gives you a right to seek vengeance. The bible teaches that God alone is worthy, the Koran teaches that God told angels to worship man and Satan alone was unwilling to worship something made out of clay. Encourages religious violence whereas the New Testament discouraged it. Written after the bible by a few hundred years so kinda unnecessary for the sake of revelation. God is not perfect in the Koran. Another key point is that the Koran is "progressive" revelation. Basically, it contradicts itself, so the later revelations modify the earlier ones. That's all good and well, except that it conflicts with the YHWH of the bible. Influenced by Christianity and Judaism, but only has a shadow of the message. On the surface it sounds the same, but if you study it's different.
What difference does it make? All religions lead to the same place? Well, according to YHWH, no they aren't. The Koran says to listen to the bible and to Jesus, but then it contradicts it. YHWH gave very specific instructions, and has a certain character, and said there is only one way to salvation. So if anything has any meaning at all, then no, not all religions are the same. Unless they are all equally wrong, in which case we really can't experience the actual god if there is a god anyways. I say all that to say this: the god taught in the Koran is not YHWH of the Judeo-Christian faith.
What difference does it make? All religions lead to the same place? Well, according to YHWH, no they aren't. The Koran says to listen to the bible and to Jesus, but then it contradicts it. YHWH gave very specific instructions, and has a certain character, and said there is only one way to salvation. So if anything has any meaning at all, then no, not all religions are the same. Unless they are all equally wrong, in which case we really can't experience the actual god if there is a god anyways. I say all that to say this: the god taught in the Koran is not YHWH of the Judeo-Christian faith.
May 27, 2024
What should you expect from the Quran? The Quran does not try to convince anyone, the Quran makes promises to those who want to believe, calms and indoctrinates them. In this context (similar to the Meditations of Aurelius in terms of inspiration and calming), on the other hand, it builds a community, but this community is not a minority and oppressed one like Christians, it is a community that fights and governs, and there are rules for this. (It is very close to Plato's Republic) (God does not love the oppressors) Likewise, there are strict rules, but as in Judaism, these rules are not the goal, but the tool that leads to goodness. The main goal is to believe in God, help people, feed the poor, and build an exemplary society. And as you read this, remember that until the last century, Muslims were an elite ruling class, involved in military, trade, and law, and this was their handbook.
April 9, 2020
Decent translation.
December 30, 2023
not what I thought it would be
December 1, 2021
Sinners go to hell, the devout go to heaven. Add in as many proofs from the bible and that’s basically the whole book. A relatively easy read.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews