Muhammad Hamidullah’s French translation was published in 1959 and produced in collaboration with the translator and historian of religions Michel Léturmy (1921-2002). The text has been re-edited a dozen times between its first publication date and the year 2000.
Hamidullah was born on 19th February 1908, in Hyderabad, a former Muslim principality and present capital city of the Indian state of Telangana. He came from a family of Sunni Muslim scholars, and began studying Islamic sciences at the al-Ǧāmi‘a al-Niẓāmiyya theological institute, a higher education establishment devoted to denominational education, founded in 1876. He then studied at the ‘Uṯmaniyya university, also in Hyderabad, where he got a degree in International Islamic law. He also received the title of ḥāfiẓ (“حافظ”) awarded to those who memorized the entire Qur’ān. His university sent him to Germany for his research; and in 1932, Hamidullah defended a PhD dissertation on “The Principle of Neutrality in International Muslim Law” (“Die Neutralität im Islamischen Völkerrecht”) at the University of Bonn. Three years later, he obtained another doctorate in Literature from the Sorbonne University for a dissertation entitled: “Documents on Muslim Diplomacy at the Time of the Prophet and Orthodox Khalifs” (“Documents sur la diplomatie musulmane à l’époque du Prophète et des Khalifes orthodoxes”). Hamidullah then returned to the Indian subcontinent to teach Islamic law at his former university, but his opposition to the annexation of Hyderabad by the new Indian state obliged him to go into exile in Paris in 1948, where he stayed until 1996.
Translations are available in both JSON and SQLite database formats.
Some translation has footnotes as well, footnotes are embedded in the translation text using
sup HTML tag.
To support a wide range of applications — including websites, mobile apps, and desktop tools, we provide
multiple export formats for translations.
Translations are grouped by Surah. Each Surah is an array containing translations for each Ayah in order. This format export translations as simple text, no formatting, no footnotes.
[
["translation of 1:1", "translation of 1:2"], ...
["translation of 2:1", "translation of 2:2"]
]
Each translation is stored with the Ayah reference (e.g. 1:1) as the key and the translated
text as the value.
This format also exports translations as simple text, no formatting, no footnotes etc.
{
"1:1": "translation of 1:1",
"1:2": "translation of 1:2",
...
"114:6": "translation of 114:6"
}Translations with footnotes are available in three more formats:
Footnotes are embedded using a <sup> tag with a foot_note attribute.
Footnote contents are stored separately under f key.
{
"88:17": {
"t": "Do the disbelievers not see how rain clouds are formed <sup foot_note=\"77646\">1</sup>",
"f": {
"77646": "The word ibl can mean 'camel' as well as 'rain cloud'..."
}
}
}Footnotes are inserted directly using double square brackets e.g([[this is footnote]])
{
"88:17": "Do the disbelievers not see how rain clouds are formed [[The word ibl can mean 'camel' as well as 'rain cloud'...]]"
}In chunks export format, text is divided into chunks. Each chunk could be a simple text or an object. Object can be either footnote or a formatting tag. This format is useful for applications can't directly render the HTML tags. Here is an example of Bridges` translation for Surah An-Nas , Ayah 6:
Above translation will be exported in chunks as:
<i class="s">(from the whisperers)</i>among the race of unseen beings<sup foot_note="81506">1</sup>and mankind.”
[
{"type":"i","text":"(from the whisperers)"}, // first chunk, should be formatted as italic
"among the race of unseen beings", //second chunk in simple text
{"type":"f","f":"81506","text":"1"}, // third chunk is a footnote,
"and mankind.”"
]