[download free] The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary by Seyyed Hossein Nasr

The Study Quran: A New Translation and Commentary is now available to get for free to everyone, almost two thousand pages of translation, commentary, and discussion of the Qur'an, is a very impressive product. It is very unusual also, since it is clearly meant to be a religious work, not a work [End Page 594] about religion. And it is a book by believers not only for believers but also for anyone interested in the topic. It has some impressive merits, and the main one to my mind is the extensive use of commentary from classical thinkers on the various parts of the text. This is most useful because it is almost never done in so systematic a way, and the text is thus made much more available to the reader who does not read Arabic or have access to a range of commentaries. It is so much better to have a variety of explanations of the text from classical commentators rather than from the translator alone, since we are given more than one person's view as well as the idea of a tradition of interpretation, rather than the suggestion purveyed by some translators that it is always obvious what the Qur'an means.

There are some problems with the book. First, the translation insists on using an archaic form of English, which can be annoying. There are lots of "unto you," "thee," and "thy" expressions here, and I wonder if that is the best way of presenting the Qur'an in English in the twenty-first century. On the other hand, the translation is first-class, once one grits one's teeth to cope with the archaisms. There are some transliteration and other errors also, hardly surprising in a book this size. At the end of the book, after the translation, there are a series of essays designed to explain different aspects of the Qur'an, and most of these are impressive and helpful. Some are rather limited, though, like the chapters on philosophy and art. In the text itself the commentators are carefully chosen, and there is little represented here from the Hanbali School and Ibn Taymiyyah. Perhaps if they are ignored they will go away? For example, Saudi Arabia does not appear, at least in the index, which makes one wonder where the editors think Mecca and Medinah are today.

Product A New Translation and Commentary book details

Hardcover: 432 pages
Publisher: Broadside Books; First Edition edition (March 21, 2017)
Language: English