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Reading the Qur'ān in Latin Christendom, 1140-1560
Selected by Choice magazine as an Outstanding Academic Title
Most of what we know about attitudes toward Islam in the medieval and early modern West has been based on polemical treatises against Islam written by Christian scholars preoccupied with defending their own faith and attacking the doctrines of others. Christian readings of the Qur'ān have in consequence typically been depicted as tedious and one-dimensional exercises in anti-Islamic hostility.
In Reading the Qur'ān in Latin Christendom, 1140-1560, Thomas E. Burman looks instead to a different set of sources: the Latin translations of the Qur'ān made by European scholars and the manuscripts and early printed books in which these translations circulated. Using these largely unexplored materials, Burman argues that the reading of the Qur'ān in Western Europe was much more complex. While their reading efforts were certainly often focused on attacking Islam, scholars of the period turned out to be equally interested in a whole range of grammatical, lexical, and interpretive problems presented by the text. Indeed, these two approaches were interconnected: attacking the Qur'ān often required sophisticated explorations of difficult Arabic grammatical problems.
Furthermore, while most readers explicitly denounced the Qur'ān as a fraud, translations of the book are sometimes inserted into the standard manuscript format of Christian Bibles and other prestigious Latin texts (small, centered blocks of text surrounded by commentary) or in manuscripts embellished with beautiful decorated initials and elegant calligraphy for the pleasure of wealthy collectors.
Addressing Christian-Muslim relations generally, as well as the histories of reading and the book, Burman offers a much fuller picture of how Europeans read the sacred text of Islam than we have previously had.
Most of what we know about attitudes toward Islam in the medieval and early modern West has been based on polemical treatises against Islam written by Christian scholars preoccupied with defending their own faith and attacking the doctrines of others. Christian readings of the Qur'ān have in consequence typically been depicted as tedious and one-dimensional exercises in anti-Islamic hostility.
In Reading the Qur'ān in Latin Christendom, 1140-1560, Thomas E. Burman looks instead to a different set of sources: the Latin translations of the Qur'ān made by European scholars and the manuscripts and early printed books in which these translations circulated. Using these largely unexplored materials, Burman argues that the reading of the Qur'ān in Western Europe was much more complex. While their reading efforts were certainly often focused on attacking Islam, scholars of the period turned out to be equally interested in a whole range of grammatical, lexical, and interpretive problems presented by the text. Indeed, these two approaches were interconnected: attacking the Qur'ān often required sophisticated explorations of difficult Arabic grammatical problems.
Furthermore, while most readers explicitly denounced the Qur'ān as a fraud, translations of the book are sometimes inserted into the standard manuscript format of Christian Bibles and other prestigious Latin texts (small, centered blocks of text surrounded by commentary) or in manuscripts embellished with beautiful decorated initials and elegant calligraphy for the pleasure of wealthy collectors.
Addressing Christian-Muslim relations generally, as well as the histories of reading and the book, Burman offers a much fuller picture of how Europeans read the sacred text of Islam than we have previously had.
328 pages, Paperback
First published August 10, 2007
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
March 8, 2018
When one imagines how the Qur'an was received and read in Latin Christendom, one does not tend to envision a great bastion of fairness. Burman ably shows that the picture is more complicated. What he offers is an exhaustive (albeit at times equally exhausting) examination of four principal Latin translations of the Qur'an (i.e., those by Robert of Ketton, Mark of Toledo, Flavius Mithradates, and Iohannes Gabriel Terrolensis [sponsored by Egidio da Viterbo]), with additional looks at some later renderings and also the work of Juan de Segovia.
With careful attention, Burman shows that, for the purposes of translation, they consistently set aside their polemical purposes and engaged the Qur'an seriously - they wrangled over philological concerns, they sought help in medieval Muslim tafsir literature, and in some cases they (well, Robert, more prone to paraphrase) even chose to render Qur'anic Arabic into the loftiest Ciceronian Latin style they could manage. They did not always grasp the Qur'an's grammar (and some better than others - Flavius Mithradates was more prone to bungling), but did occasionally achieve interesting and insightful renderings. (For instance, in Q. 22:5, Mark of Toledo rendered mudghatin mukhallaqatin wa-ghayr mukhallaqatin as carne consolidata et non consolidata).
Burman goes beyond the textual features of the translations themselves. He looks at the marginalia in all the manuscripts, some of which appear to descend from notes by the translators (which are consistently polemical). He scrutinizes tables of contents and indices; he examines what other texts the translations are bound with, and explores the ramifications for why certain editions of the Qur'an came to be collector's pieces in medieval Europe, "a desirable and exotic object useful for impressing one's wealthy friends." Burman even notes that manuscripts of the Qur'an in Latin came to be written out in the same textbook format that was popular within Scholasticism for the Bible and other key works deserving of study.
All in all, it can be easy to get bogged down in the details here, but if this particularly narrow subject is one that catches your attention, well, there's no other book quite like this one.
With careful attention, Burman shows that, for the purposes of translation, they consistently set aside their polemical purposes and engaged the Qur'an seriously - they wrangled over philological concerns, they sought help in medieval Muslim tafsir literature, and in some cases they (well, Robert, more prone to paraphrase) even chose to render Qur'anic Arabic into the loftiest Ciceronian Latin style they could manage. They did not always grasp the Qur'an's grammar (and some better than others - Flavius Mithradates was more prone to bungling), but did occasionally achieve interesting and insightful renderings. (For instance, in Q. 22:5, Mark of Toledo rendered mudghatin mukhallaqatin wa-ghayr mukhallaqatin as carne consolidata et non consolidata).
Burman goes beyond the textual features of the translations themselves. He looks at the marginalia in all the manuscripts, some of which appear to descend from notes by the translators (which are consistently polemical). He scrutinizes tables of contents and indices; he examines what other texts the translations are bound with, and explores the ramifications for why certain editions of the Qur'an came to be collector's pieces in medieval Europe, "a desirable and exotic object useful for impressing one's wealthy friends." Burman even notes that manuscripts of the Qur'an in Latin came to be written out in the same textbook format that was popular within Scholasticism for the Bible and other key works deserving of study.
All in all, it can be easy to get bogged down in the details here, but if this particularly narrow subject is one that catches your attention, well, there's no other book quite like this one.
March 10, 2026
Who could've guessed that a book about Qu'ranic exegesis in medieval Europe, written by a non-Muslim, could have been so bad?
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews