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AN online encyclopaedia erroneously claims that Maulana A’shiq Ilahi Merathi was the first person to have translated the holy Quran into Urdu. This is just one example of how misleading information online on Islam and Urdu can be.
Translations of the Quran into different languages have a long history. Similarly, the Quran’s Urdu translations have a history that dates back to much earlier than Maulana A’shiq Ilahi’s translation, which was published by Khair-ul-Matab’e (a press in Lucknow) in 1902.
According to Dr Jameel Jalibi, Shah Abdul Qadir’s translation, published from Delhi in 1829, is the first, complete and published Urdu translation of the Quran as earlier Urdu translations were either partial or could not survive. Some literary histories report the Quran’s many earlier Urdu translations but such manuscripts either remained unpublished or simply could not be found. After Qadir’s Urdu translation, there have been over 150 Urdu translations of the Quran.
Shah Abdul Qadir ke Urdu tarjuma-i-Quran ka tehqeeqi-o-lisani mutal’a, is a research work recently published by Karachi’s Idara-i-Yadgar-i-Ghalib. Written by Prof Dr Muhammad Saleem Khalid, it traces not only the history of Urdu translations of the Holy Quran but also the history of the Quran’s translations in the subcontinent.
The book also tries to correct the common misconception about the subcontinent’s first Persian translation of the Quran. Several scholars, including Moulvi Abdul Haq, have mistakenly written that the Quran’s first Persian translation in the subcontinent was carried out by Shah Waliullah (1703-1762). Dr Saleem Khalid says that the earliest translation of the Quran rendered in the subcontinent in Persian was part of the Arabic tafseer (exegesis) of the Quran written by Nizamuddin Nishpuri, an Iranian scholar who had come to India. Nizamuddin’s tafseer was in Arabic and was named Tafseer-ul-Gharaaeb. He died in 728 Hijri/ 1327-28 AD.
The Quran’s first, complete exegesis written in the subcontinent was in Persian too, says Dr Saleem Khalid. It was Shahabuddin Daulatabdi’s exegesis titled Behr-i-mawaaaj and it took special care of the Persian translation as well. Shahabuddin Daulatabadi died in 849 Hijri/1445-46 AD (some scholars do not agree with the year and they reckon it to be 840 or 842 Hijri).
In the early period, Persian translations of the Quran were often part of the exegesis and the subcontinent’s first Persian translation of the Quran without an exegesis was carried out by Hazrat Nooh Sarwar Halai, a well-known spiritual figure and scholar from Sindh, who, according to Dr Khalid, died in 995 Hijri/ 1587 AD (but the year slightly differs in other sources).
As for the earliest translation of the Holy Quran in local Indian languages, Dr Khalid quotes Dr Nabi Bakhsh Baloch. Dr Baloch in one of his articles has discussed a tradition that has a clue about the earliest translation of the Quran in the subcontinent.
Dr Baloch wrote that according to Ajaaeb-ul-Hind — a travelogue written by Buzurg Bin Shahryar, the famous traveller — Mahruk Bin Raiq was the ruler of a state near Kashmir. In 270 Hijri/883AD, Mahruk had requested Mansura’s Muslim ruler Abdullah Bin Umer Bin Abdul Aziz for a translation of the Quran in the local language. The ruler of Mansura had asked an Iraqi scholar settled in Sindh to do the job who translated the Quran up to Surah Yaseen (Chapter 36). The translation has never been found and is only a part of history. Dr Khalid Saleem has mentioned the translation as “Hindi”. But I very much doubt that Hindi as a language existed in those days. It might have been another local language, probably Sindhi. Some believe that Buzurg Bin Shahryar is purely a fictional character and the book attributed to him was written much later. But the book has been translated from Arabic into French and Russian.
Aside from that, Urdu’s earliest translations of the Quran were carried out in South India, especially in Deccan and Gujarat, writes Dr Khalid. Many of them were never published and it is because of Moulvi Abdul Haq that we know about these translations as he researched the manuscripts and quoted from them in his book Qadeem Urdu. Some of the translations are only partial and are renderings of only a chapter or two from the Quran.
The language used is Old Urdu or what is now often referred to as Deccani Urdu or Gujarati Urdu. While the book quotes from a few such manuscripts, it says that the earliest complete Urdu translation of the Quran is the one by Shah Abdul Qadir and discusses it in detail purely from a linguistic and academic point of view, refraining from religious bias.
Shah Abdul Qadir was one of the four sons of Shah Waliullah and all four became religious scholars. Shah Abdul Qadir was born in 1752 in Delhi. He completed his Urdu translation of the Quran in 1205 Hijri/1790-91 AD and named it Mouzeh-i-Quran, which is based on chronogram as the numerical values of its letters add up to the figure 1205. First published in 1829, it is an idiomatic translation and has a preference over his brother, Shah Rafi’uddin’s translation, which was completed a few years before Shah Abdul Qadir’s translation. But Shah Rafi’uddin’s translation is more or less verbatim and at times sounds grammatically unfamiliar though its value and importance cannot be underestimated.
Taking into account the historical development of Urdu prose, the book discusses in detail the idiomatic style, vocabulary and grammar of Shah Abdul Qadir’s Urdu translation of the Quran.
Published in Dawn, January 2nd, 2017
