Bridging the ‘Orient’ and the West: Arabia, the British Empire in India, and English Translations of the Qur’an in the Early Twentieth Century

Translation and distribution of the Qur'an as an expression of daʿwa has served as a political tool since the mid-twentieth century. This article investigates three prominent, widely used English translations of the Qur'an – those by Marmaduke Pickthall (1930), ʿAbdullah Yūsuf ʿAlī (1934–1938, revised 1939–1940), and Muhammad Asad (1980) – in the context of crosspollination between Arabia and the British Empire in the Indian subcontinent (the British Raj) from the pre-World War I era through the end of the British Raj in 1947. It explores the intersection of religion, politics, and academics through transregional travels between Britain, Arabia, and India, placing Qur'an translators and translations into historical perspective and investigating the Orientalisation of Europeans during their sojourns in Arabia and India through conversion to Islam and engagement with the ‘authentic’ land and language of the Qur'an, even as Muslims from the Empire in India became Orientalised through sojourns and studies in Britain. This interplay between regions and peoples establishes the context in which the meaning of the Qur'an was translated not simply into English but also into expressions of meaning for British society as a form of daʿwa. The article argues that this model of tripartite connection between Britain, Arabia, and India laid the foundations for later developments in Qur'an translation and distribution, including the Hilālī-Khān translation.