An early anonymous Greek translation of the Qur'ān (original) (raw)
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The Authorship of the Early Greek Translation of the Quran (Vat. gr. 681)
Dumbarton Oaks Papers 77, 2023
This article sheds light on the first Greek translation of the Quran and the possible cultural-religious background of its translator(s). The fragments of this quranic translation are mainly preserved in the anti-Islamic work of Nicetas of Byzantium (ninth/tenth century), Refutation of the Quran. Through a philological-theological analysis of the remnants of this quranic translation handed down in Nicetas’s work, referred to as Coranus Graecus, the article aims at giving a detailed picture of the understanding of the Arabic quranic text and its subtly nuanced rendering in Greek. Therefore, the article examines some of the Greek quranic fragments in terms of their philological rendering into Greek and compares them synoptically with the Arabic quranic readings. Through this Greek–Arabic analysis, the article elaborates on the early Christian understanding of the quranic text as documented in the Coranus Graecus. The argument therefore focuses on verses which are theologically relevant to Christian–Muslim interfaith topics. In a final part, conclusions are presented about the cultural and religious background of the translator(s) of the Coranus Graecus based on the philological-comparative analysis and its cultural-historical interpretation.
The aim of this paper is to outline some of the methodological issues which have arisen during the elaboration of my PhD dissertation in progress: the critical edition and study of a Latin translation of the Qur‘ān (1518). The translation in question is preserved in two manuscripts: Cambridge MS Mm. v. 26 (C) and Milan MS D 100 inf. (M). The earlier manuscript dates back to 1530, whereas the Milan manuscript was copied in 1621. Only the M manuscript has been preserved in its entirety, preceded, what is more, by a three-folium prologue written by the copyist, David Colville (a Scottish orientalist). From this prologue we learn that the name of the translator of the Qur‘ān was Iohannes Gabriel Terrolensis and that his translation was later corrected by Iohannes Leo Granatinus (also known as al-Hasan al-Wazzān and Yūhannā al-Asad). The numerous corrections contribute to the emergence of diverse methodological problems as far as the formal criteria of the critical edition are concerned.