ʿAbd al-Mājid Daryābādī’s <i>Tafsir-ul-Quran</i> and the <i>daʿwa</i>logy of Abū’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī Nadwī

Beginning especially in the early twentieth century, Qur'an translation emerged as a major facet of modern Islamic daʿwa (‘“inviting” to Islam’, or ‘Islamic mission’). With the increasing availability of new translations and commentaries as the century progressed, Muslim leaders often found themselves asked for, or simply offering, recommendations about which Qur'an translations were most suitable for different purposes. This article examines the case of one such recommendation: Sayyid Abū’l-Ḥasan ʿAlī Nadwī's endorsement of ʿAbd al-Mājid Daryābādī's early twentieth-century English translation-commentary, Tafsir-ul-Quran. In so doing, it sheds lights on Qur'an translation in relation to modern daʿwa and, more precisely, on how a thinker's ‘ daʿwalogy’ (Islamic missionary theology) might influence his or her translation and commentary preferences. Through a historical contextualisation of Daryābādī and Nadwī, along with close readings of the former's English Qur'an translation-commentary and the latter's endorsement, the article argues that Nadwī's endorsement of Daryābādī not only provides a useful window into Nadwī's – and by extension, Daryābādī's – daʿwalogy, but also that Nadwī's daʿwalogy helps to explain why he endorsed Daryābādī's translation-commentary in the first place. In studying this case, the article illustrates significant linkages between daʿwa, Qur'an translation, networks of Muslim thinkers, and rising inter-religious competition in the late-colonial period and beyond.