Marmaduke Pickthall - Quran Translator And Servant Of Islam

By kilamxx

Since the last half century or so, if one was looking up the English translation of a certain verse or passage of the Quran, then it would most probably be from one of two well known translations :- Marmaduke Pickthall’s The Meaning of the Glorious Koran and Abdullah Yusuf Ali’s The Holy Qur'an: Text, Translation and Commentary. These two works are the most widely used in the English speaking world and yet not many of us know much about their authors. This blog will be on the author of the first, which was published in 1930, just eight years before the second.

Marmaduke William Pickthall was born in 1875 in London to Mary O'Brien and the Reverend Charles Grayson Pickthall, an Anglican clergyman. He was a contemporary of Winston Churchill at Harrow, the famous private school. From his early years, he perfected a talent for languages.

At the age of eighteen he traveled among the Arab population between Egypt and Syria for two years, picking up fluency in Arabic and a love for Islam. However, his attempt to convert to Islam was rejected by his teacher then, the Sheykh-ul-Ulema of the great mosque at Damascus.

He ended up back in England, got married to Muriel Smith in 1896 and started writing novels. Most of his novels were based on his experiences in the Middle East and were critically acclaimed by his contemporaries, among them being H. G. Wells.

Between writing novels he traveled extensively to the Arab world and Turkey. His affinity for the Turkish Caliphate led him to write in Turkey’s defense against the British Empire during the years leading to the First World War and thereafter. As Daphnée Rentfrow described in her biographical piece on Pickthall :-

More and more, it was becoming obvious to Pickthall and his readers that he was a strong and eloquent proponent of Islam and its varied cultures. Yet Pickthall's background assumed an adherence to the rule of the Church of England. His father and his father's father were clergymen; two step-sisters were Anglican nuns; it was through church contacts that Pickthall first went east. Little by little, however, the actions of the Christian community, especially missionaries, disappointed Pickthall. Before the war, Pickthall was still a practicing Anglican: but with loyalties split between the British and Turkish empires, Pickthall had a crisis of faith and nerves, evident in his writings for The New Age. Finally, in November 1917, at the last of a series of talks to the Muslim Literary Society on "Islam and Progress," Pickthall openly declared his acceptance of Islam. He took the name Mohammed and almost immediately became a pillar of the British Islamic Community.

In 1919, Pickthall worked for the London-based Islamic Information Bureau that among other things published the weekly Muslim Outlook. After completing his last novel the Early Hours in 1920, he departed for his new assignment in India to serve as the editor of the Bombay Chronicle.

India became home to the Pickthalls for the next fifteen years. Muslim communities throughout India invited Pickthall regularly to deliver Friday khutbas as well as lectures.

Ever since he converted to Islam, the mission of translating the Quran had always preoccupied Pickthall’s mind. He saw that there was an obligation for all Muslims to know the Quran intimately. Pickthall took a two-year sabbatical in Hyderabad to complete his translation of the meaning of the Quran, a work that he considered as the summit of his achievement. In 1930, Pickthall published The Meaning of the Glorious Koran. Pickthall maintained that the Quran, being the word of God could not be translated.

Pickthall returned to England in 1935 where he died a year later on May 19^th. He is buried in the Muslim cemetery at Brookwood, Surrey. Sixteen years later another distinguished translator Abdullah Yusuf Ali joined him in this resting place.

References:-

1. Peter Clark, Marmaduke Pickthall: British Muslim; London: Quartet, 1986.

2. Daphnée Rentfrow, The True Call: Marmaduke Pickthall.

3. Marmaduke Pickthall: A Brief Biography (British Muslim Heritage).