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George Sale
George Sale
George Sale
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George Sale (1697–1736) was a British Orientalist scholar and practising solicitor, best known for his 1734 translation of the Quran into English. In 1748, after having read Sale's translation,[1] Voltaire wrote his own essay "De l'Alcoran et de Mahomet" ("On the Quran and on Mohammed").

For A General Dictionary, Historical and Critical,[2] an English translation and enlargement of Pierre Bayle's Dictionnaire historique et critique,[3] Sale supplied "Articles relating to Oriental History".[2]: title page 

Biography

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Born in Canterbury, Kent, he was educated at the King's School, Canterbury, and in 1720 became a student of the Inner Temple. It is known that he trained as a solicitor in his early years but took time off from his legal pursuits, returning at need to his profession. Sale was an early member of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.

George Sale became seriously ill with fever for eight days before his death. He died at Surrey Street, The Strand, London, on 13 November 1736 and was buried at St Clement Danes in London. His family consisted of a wife and five children.

The Quran

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Title page of a first edition of Sale's translation

In 1734, Sale published a translation of the Quran, The Koran: Commonly called The Alcoran of Mohammed,[4] dedicated to John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville. Relying heavily on O.M.D. Louis Maracci's Arabic edition and Latin translation,[5] Sale provided numerous notes and a Preliminary discourse. Sale had access to the Dutch Church, Austin Friars' 14th-century manuscript of al-Baydāwī's Lights of Revelation and the Secrets of Interpretation, and this seems the source for his Arabic Quran rather than his own personal Quran, catalogued MS Sale 76 in the Bodleian Library.[6]

Sale's footnotes provide the literal translation where it differs from the idiom of the body text; he gives alternate variant readings; and supplementary historical and contextual information.[6] Sir Edward Denison Ross added the Introduction to the 1922 reprint of Sale's translation.[7]

Preliminary discourse

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Though he did not place Islam at an equal level with Christianity, Sale seemed to view Mohammad as a conqueror who sought to destroy idolatry and a lawgiver who managed to change and supplant many practices in Arabia:

The remembrance of the calamities brought on so many nations by the conquests of the Arabians may possibly raise some indignation against him who formed them to empire, but this being equally applicable to all conquerors, could not, of itself, occasion all the detestation with which the name Mohammed is loaded. He has given a new system of religion, which has had still greater success than the arms of his followers, and to establish this religion made use of an imposture, and on this account it is supposed that he must of necessity have been a most abandoned villain, and his memory is become infamous. But as Mohammed gave his Arabs the best religion he could, as well as the best laws, preferable, at least, to those of the ancient pagan lawgivers, I confess I cannot see why he deserves not equal respect, though not with Moses or Jesus Christ, whose laws came really from heaven, yet with Minos or Numa, notwithstanding the distinction of a learned writer, who seems to think it a greater crime to make use of an imposture to set up a new religion, founded on the acknowledgment of one true God, and to destroy idolatry, than to use the same means to gain reception to rules and regulations for the more orderly practice of heathenism already established.

Sale prefixed a Preliminary Discourse to his translation covering topics including Arabs "before hijrah"; the State of the Eastern Churches, and Judaism, at time of Mohammed; the Peculiarities of the Quran; positive and negative Doctrines and Instructions of the Quran; and political Islam in the 1730s.

Sale posits the decline of the Persian Empire on rivalry between the sects of Manes and Mazdak, and mass immigration into Arabia to escape persecution in the Grecian empire. In his eighth essay on False Prophecy, Sale notes Muslim Sects both Canonical (Maleci, Hanefites, Hanbali and Shafi‘i) and "heretical" (Shi'ism).

Other works

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Sale was also a corrector of the Arabic version of the New Testament (1726) issued by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. He acquired a library with valuable rare manuscripts of Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and Arabic origins, which is now held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.

He assisted in the writing of the Universal History published in London from 1747 to 1768. When the plan of universal history was arranged, Sale was one of those who were selected to carry it into execution. Sale wrote the chapter, "The Introduction, containing the Cosmogony, or Creation of the World". Critics of the time accused Sale of having a view which was hostile to tradition and the Scriptures. They attacked his account of cosmogony as having a view giving currency to heretical opinions.

His books:

Legacy

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In 1760 the Radcliffe Library, Oxford acquired his collection of mainly 13th-18th century Persian and Arabic manuscripts, mostly poetry and belles-lettres. They were transferred to the Bodleian Library in 1872.[8] Richard Alfred Davenport wrote his biography.[5] Works included in Sales library include Ibn Khallikān’s Wafayāt al-ayān (MSS Sale 48–49); selection of hadith (MS Sale 70); collections of the stories of saints and martyrs (MS Sale 77–78); the sayings of Alī (MS Sale 82); biographies of Shi'ite, Majālis al-mu'minīn by Nūr Allāh b.'Abd Allāh Shushtarī (MS Sale 68); instructions on use of the Quran for divination (MS Sale 69), and a treatise on the merits of visiting the Prophet's grave (MS Sale 56).[6]

Sale's translation of the Qur'an has been reprinted into modern times. In January 2007, Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress, was sworn in using a 1764 edition of Sale's translation of the Quran, sold to the Library of Congress in 1815 by Thomas Jefferson.[9] In January 2019 newly elected Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar were sworn in using the same edition of Sales's translation of Qur'an.[10]

References

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George Sale

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George Sale (c. 1697 – 1736) was an English orientalist scholar and solicitor whose principal achievement was the first direct of the Qur'an from into English, published in 1734. Born to a merchant, Sale trained in law at the from 1720 while independently mastering and , enabling his rigorous textual work on ic sources. His edition included explanatory notes and a lengthy preliminary surveying Muhammadan history, doctrines, and customs, which offered early Western scholarship a systematic, if critically framed, introduction to based on primary materials rather than secondhand Latin accounts. Sale also contributed oriental papers and cosmogonical analyses to collaborative historical compilations, establishing his reputation in European intellectual circles before his early death at age 39. Though his reflected 18th-century Christian polemics in its annotations—dismissing the Qur'an as a patchwork of borrowed and fabricated elements—it prioritized philological accuracy over prior English versions' reliance on intermediaries, influencing later editions and readers including .

Early Life and Education

Birth and Family Background

George Sale was born circa 1697, the son of Samuel Sale, a citizen and merchant of . Little is documented regarding his mother's identity or siblings, with biographical accounts focusing primarily on his father's mercantile status within the , which provided a modest but stable urban environment conducive to and later professional pursuits. This merchant lineage aligned with the commercial ethos of late 17th-century , where networks facilitated exposure to diverse and ideas from overseas, potentially influencing Sale's subsequent interest in .

Formal Education and Initial Influences

Sale pursued formal legal training rather than a university education, being admitted as a student to the in on an unspecified date in 1720. There he prepared for practice as a solicitor, a profession he followed in the capital for much of his career. Claims that he attended the King's School in lack corroboration from school records, despite assertions in early biographies. His initial scholarly influences appear to have been self-directed, particularly in acquiring proficiency in , which he mastered without evident formal instruction in oriental languages. This self-taught expertise in positioned him to contribute to printing projects by 1726, when the engaged him to correct Arabic typefaces for their publications. Such autonomous study reflected the era's growing interest among British intellectuals in Eastern texts, though Sale's path diverged from academic orientalists by integrating linguistic skills with legal practice.

Professional Career

George Sale entered the after his admission as a student to the on 24 October 1720. Although there is no record of him being called to the bar, he established a practice as a solicitor in , where he handled routine legal matters while balancing scholarly pursuits. Sale's legal engagements included pro bono work for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), an organization dedicated to disseminating religious literature and . In November 1726, he became a corresponding member of the SPCK and regularly attended its meetings, providing legal counsel on matters such as property and publication disputes aligned with the society's charitable objectives. Throughout the 1720s and early 1730s, Sale intermittently paused his practice to focus on language studies and orientalist research, resuming solicitor duties as financial needs arose. This dual commitment underscores how his legal income facilitated his independent scholarship, though specific client cases beyond SPCK affiliations remain undocumented in surviving records. His early death in 1736 at age 39 curtailed any potential expansion of his practice.

Engagement with Oriental Scholarship

Sale's interest in Oriental scholarship developed alongside his legal practice, focusing primarily on language and literature. He acquired proficiency in , possibly through self-study or formal instruction at , supplemented by tutoring from Syrian Christian scholars Salomon Negri around 1720 and Carolus Dadichi of in 1723. In August 1726, Sale was appointed corrector for the translation of the by the (SPCK), a role that leveraged his linguistic expertise to refine texts intended for Eastern Christian communities. He formally joined the SPCK as a corresponding member in November 1726 and remained active until at least 1734, providing legal services as honorary solicitor, auditing accounts, and serving as steward at meetings. These contributions supported the society's and educational efforts in the East, emphasizing accurate scriptural dissemination over polemical aims. Beyond biblical corrections, Sale co-founded the Society for the Encouragement of Learning before 1736, an that persisted until 1746 and fostered scholarly exchange, including Oriental topics. He also supplied Oriental biographies for volumes 2 through 4 of the General Dictionary (1734–1736), drawing on sources to compile entries on Eastern figures. These efforts, conducted amid his solicitor duties, demonstrated a pragmatic integration of philological rigor with practical scholarship, prioritizing textual fidelity derived from primary materials.

Major Scholarly Works

Translation of the Quran (1734)

George Sale's The Koran, commonly called the Alcoran of Mohammed appeared in 1734, marking the first English rendering of the translated directly from the original rather than intermediary French or Latin versions. Published in by J. Wilcox and printed by C. Ackers, the two-volume edition totaled approximately 750 pages, including a 248-page preliminary discourse, the surah-by-surah , and voluminous footnotes. Sale dedicated the work to , and incorporated visual aids such as a folding of Arabia by R. W. Seale and three genealogical tables tracing Muhammad's lineage and Arab tribes. This scholarly effort drew on Sale's proficiency in , acquired through self-study and access to manuscripts, positioning the translation as a tool for European readers to assess Islamic texts on their merits amid prevailing skepticism toward as a derivative faith. Sale's methodology emphasized fidelity to the Arabic, consulting primary commentaries like al-Baydawi's Anwar al-Tanzil wa-Asrar al-Ta'wil for annotations, while cross-referencing the 1698 Latin translation by Ludovico Marracci to refine ambiguities, though he explicitly corrected Marracci's occasional Arabic transcription errors, such as in Quran 7:149. Unlike Alexander Ross's 1649 paraphrase, which derived from André du Ryer's French edition and injected Protestant polemics, Sale avoided overt confessional distortion in the core text, opting instead for literal phrasing that preserved the Quran's repetitive style and elliptical constructions—features he analyzed in the discourse as evidence of oral composition rather than polished literature. Notes appended to verses clarified doctrinal points, historical contexts, and legal prescriptions, often citing Persian tafsirs alongside Arabic ones, though critics later questioned the depth of Sale's independent Arabic engagement, positing Marracci as a dominant scaffold despite Sale's assertions of primacy. The result yielded a version prized for its accessibility and detail, remaining the standard English Quran until the 19th century and influencing figures like Thomas Jefferson, who owned a copy for legal study. The preliminary discourse functioned as an independent treatise, synthesizing Arabic biographies (siras) and collections to outline Muhammad's life from to CE, Islamic rituals like the and salat, and tenets such as and prophethood, while arguing—on evidential grounds from textual parallels—that the amalgamated and Christian elements with Arabian , lacking novel . Sale enumerated chronological inconsistencies in ordering, attributing them to abrogation (naskh) doctrines, and highlighted variants in early recensions, drawing from sources like Ibn Hisham's and al-Tabari's for factual anchoring rather than hagiographic inflation. This section, exceeding 200 pages, eschewed outright dismissal of —acknowledging precepts like charity and —but framed the faith's expansion as propelled by military success and political acumen over miraculous claims, a causal assessment rooted in empirical review of conquest records from onward. In the translation text, Sale rendered surahs in prose approximating the saj' rhyme without forcing poetic meter, preserving abrogated verses' supersession and legalistic imperatives, such as inheritance shares in 4:11-12 or warfare rules in 2:190-193, with notes elucidating casuistic applications from fiqh traditions. Explanatory annotations, spanning hundreds of pages cumulatively, dissected obscure terms—like rendering jinn as "genii" informed by pre-Islamic lore—and cross-referenced Biblical echoes, e.g., paralleling Maryam surah (19) motifs to Gospel infancy narratives, to underscore intertextual dependencies verifiable via shared motifs absent in pagan antecedents. Sale's annotations prioritized exegetical consensus from Sunni sources, occasionally noting Shi'a divergences, but subordinated interpretation to textual primacy, a restraint contrasting Marracci's heavier Latin interpolations. This apparatus rendered the work not merely a conveyance but a critical edition, equipping readers to evaluate claims of inerrancy against internal evidences like variant readings (qira'at) documented in early grammarians.

The Preliminary Discourse

The Preliminary Discourse comprises an extensive 187-page introduction to George Sale's 1734 English translation of the , structured in eight sections that furnish historical, cultural, and doctrinal context derived chiefly from and Muslim sources. Its primary purpose is to equip readers with essential background prior to engaging the Quranic text, emphasizing the and customs of pre-Islamic —termed by the "state of ignorance"—including their , tribal , and rudimentary social structures, as recounted in Islamic histories. Sale draws on Eastern chroniclers such as for these accounts, aiming to delineate causal factors in the emergence of without overt Christian polemic, though he critiques Muhammad's prophetic claims as borrowings from and adapted for Arabian audiences. Subsequent sections chronicle Muhammad's life, portraying him as a merchant from the tribe who, around 610 CE, began receiving revelations amid Mecca's polytheistic milieu, leading to conflicts with tribal leaders and the Hijra to in 622 CE; Sale details these events using Muslim biographical traditions like those of , while noting discrepancies in transmission and potential embellishments over time. The discourse then shifts to the itself, with five sections analyzing its compilation under circa 632–634 CE and standardization under around 650 CE, its non-chronological sura arrangement (from longest to shortest, except the Fatiha), stylistic features like rhyme and repetition, and mechanisms such as abrogation (naskh) where later verses supersede earlier ones. Sale underscores the text's oral origins and practices, attributing its preservation to communal rather than solely written codices, and highlights legal precepts governing , , and warfare as embedded in the suras. The final sections elucidate core Islamic doctrines—unitarian monotheism (), prophetic lineage from to , , and —alongside rituals like , , and pilgrimage, and address post-Muhammad schisms into Sunni and Shia branches, as well as later prophetic claimants. By synthesizing Muslim exegeses from commentators like Al-Baydawi and Al-Jalalayn, Sale innovates in presenting 's self-understanding to Western readers, prioritizing empirical details from primary texts over speculative European conjectures, though his reliance on translated intermediaries introduces minor interpretive layers verifiable against originals. This framework influenced Enlightenment figures by framing as a historical rooted in Arabian causal realities, rather than mere Oriental exoticism.

Translation Text and Explanatory Notes

Sale's translation presents the Quranic surahs in sequential order, rendered as continuous prose in to convey the original 's meaning with a degree of literal accuracy while prioritizing readability for non-specialist audiences. Interpolations for implied elements or clarifications appear in italics within the text, such as expansions on pronouns or contextual phrases, distinguishing them from the core . This approach draws directly from the text, incorporating exegetical insertions to resolve ambiguities without altering the fundamental structure, as seen in renderings like Sūrah 4:3: "And if ye fear that ye shall not act with equity towards orphans of the female sex, || take in marriage of such other women as please you, two, or three, or four, and not more." The explanatory notes consist of voluminous footnotes appended to verses, primarily sourced from classical Muslim tafsīr works, including al-Bayḍāwī's comprehensive commentary as the main foundation, supplemented by others like Jalāl al-Dīn al-Suyūṭī and al-Ṭabarī. These notes address textual obscurities through explanations of , (often with Arabic terms and transliterations, e.g., "Ḥawāriyyūn" for disciples), historical occasions of (asbāb al-nuzūl), abrogations, and variant readings among early recensions. Additional content in the notes derives from European orientalists such as Edward Pococke, Barthélemy d'Herbelot, and Adrian Reland, integrating parallels to Biblical accounts (e.g., identifying Jālūṭ as ) and Arabian customs to contextualize doctrines like or ritual practices for readers unfamiliar with Islamic traditions. The notes aim to reproduce commentators' interpretations verbatim where feasible, citing them briefly to illuminate diverse Muslim views on contentious passages, such as equity requirements in plural marriage, without injecting overt in the annotations themselves. This underscores Sale's intent to facilitate objective study by privileging indigenous over external polemic.

Contributions to Universal History

George Sale played a pivotal role in the compilation of An Universal History, from the Earliest Account of Time (1736–1768), a collaborative 65-volume work aimed at chronicling world history from creation onward through integrated sacred and profane narratives. As a principal contributor and early driving force, Sale focused on non-European regions, particularly authoring sections on the ancient histories of the Persians, Arabs, and Turks by drawing directly from indigenous Arabic and Oriental manuscripts rather than relying on secondary European interpretations. This approach marked an innovative shift toward philological rigor and source criticism, prioritizing primary texts to reconstruct pre-Islamic Arabian society, tribal structures, and the rise of Islam with greater fidelity to original accounts. Sale's sections on Arab history, completed shortly before his death in 1736, extended the scholarly methodology of his 1734 Quran translation, incorporating detailed chronologies of Arabian tribes, customs, and the life of derived from Arabic chronicles such as those by and . He presented multiple interpretive perspectives on key events—like the or early migrations—juxtaposing biblical, classical, and Eastern sources to allow readers to weigh independently, reflecting an Enlightenment-era commitment to empirical verification over dogmatic assertion. These contributions filled a gap in English , offering the first comprehensive, source-based treatment of Islamic origins in a universal framework that treated Eastern civilizations as integral rather than peripheral to global narrative. Though Sale's direct involvement ended with his passing, his foundational Oriental volumes influenced the project's initial ecumenical tone, emphasizing cosmopolitan Christian scholarship while underscoring the authenticity of non-Western historical traditions. Later editorial shifts toward diluted this balance, but Sale's insistence on original-language proficiency and critical sifting of evidence established a precedent for subsequent .

Methodological Approach

Sources and Scholarly Influences

George Sale's methodological approach to oriental scholarship, particularly in his 1734 translation of the Qur'an, drew directly from the source text, distinguishing it from prior English versions reliant on Latin intermediaries like Ross's 1649 rendition from du Ryer's French. Sale explicitly stated his intent to render the Arabic faithfully, consulting the original manuscript traditions preserved in Islamic scholarship rather than European adaptations. For interpretive notes and historical context, Sale primarily utilized classical Muslim (exegeses), with the 13th-century scholar al-Baydawi's Anwar al-Tanzil wa-Asrar al-Ta'wil serving as a core reference; he borrowed a copy from the at , integrating its philological and doctrinal explanations to clarify obscurities in the Arabic. Additional exegeses included works by and Ibn Abi Zamanin, whose Tafsir al-Qur'an al-Aziz informed his annotations on legal and theological passages, reflecting Sale's dependence on indigenous Islamic interpretive traditions for accuracy over speculative European conjecture. He also incorporated insights from Arabic-speaking informants and a network of manuscript consultations, ensuring fidelity to variant readings () in the Qur'anic text. Among European influences, Edward Pococke, Laudian Professor of Arabic at (1636–1691), exerted significant impact through his Specimen Historiae Arabum (1650), which Sale credited in his preface for providing reliable Arabic historical sources on and early , grounding his "Preliminary Discourse" in empirical rather than polemics. Pococke's editions of Arabic texts, including those from traditions, shaped Sale's understanding of Semitic and . Sale further referenced Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville's Bibliothèque Orientale (1697), an encyclopedic compilation of Islamic lore drawn from Persian and Arabic chronicles, for biographical and doctrinal details in his footnotes, though he critiqued its occasional inaccuracies stemming from secondary French adaptations. Less directly, Ludovico Marracci's 1698 Latin Qur'an influenced comparative notes, but Sale prioritized Arabic primacy to avoid the confessional biases evident in Marracci's Catholic annotations. These sources underscore Sale's commitment to textual empiricism, blending Islamic primary materials with select Western orientalist advancements, while eschewing the dogmatic overlays of predecessors like Ross, whose work amplified Protestant critiques over literalism.

Translation Philosophy and Orientalist Innovations

George Sale's translation philosophy emphasized fidelity to the original, prioritizing literal rendering where feasible while ensuring readability in English. He explicitly critiqued prior English versions, such as Alexander Ross's 1649 rendition derived from a French intermediary, for inaccuracies stemming from second-hand sources and polemical distortions, positioning his 1734 work as the Arabic-to-English effort intended for scholarly precision rather than confessional attack. Sale adopted a method of close adherence to the Quranic , retaining terms like untranslated when no precise English equivalent existed, supplemented by explanatory notes drawn predominantly from Sunni exegetes such as al-Baydawi's Anwar al-Tanzil wa-Asrar al-Ta'wil (c. 1300), al-Zamakhshari's al-Kashshaf (1144), and the Jalalayn commentary (), to elucidate ambiguities without imposing external interpretations. This reliance on indigenous Islamic marked a departure from earlier translators' dependence on Latin or accounts, aiming to let the text's internal logic and historical context inform comprehension, though he occasionally interpolated clarifications for Western audiences unfamiliar with Islamic or prophetic traditions. In terms of orientalist innovations, Sale pioneered the systematic incorporation of Muslim () into a Western-language translation, bridging European scholarship with primary Arabic sources in a manner that anticipated later academic 's emphasis on philological rigor over theological . His Preliminary Discourse, prefixed to the translation, innovated by compiling biographical details on from sirah works like Ibn Ishaq's (d. 767) and al-Waqidi's (d. 823) accounts, alongside rational analyses of Quranic compilation under caliphs (r. 632–634) and (r. 644–656), abrogations, and textual variants—elements treated causally as products of historical circumstance rather than divine mystery. This approach reflected an emergent Enlightenment-era , privileging empirical reconstruction of Islam's origins over confessional dismissal, as evidenced by his discussion of the 's stylistic repetitions as mnemonic aids suited to oral transmission in 7th-century Arabia. By grounding notes in orthodox sources while noting interpretive divergences among Muslim scholars, Sale facilitated a detached evaluation, influencing subsequent works like Edward Gibbon's historical treatments, though later critiques from Islamic perspectives highlight his occasional framing of doctrines through a deistic lens that understated eschatological literalism.

Reception and Controversies

Contemporary Praise and Critiques

George Sale's 1734 translation of the elicited praise from Enlightenment figures for its scholarly accuracy and comprehensive annotations drawn from sources. commended the work highly, citing it favorably in his Essai sur les mœurs et l'esprit des nations (1756) for its reliable rendering and the value of its explanatory notes, though he maintained a critical view of as a "sublime ." The Preliminary Discourse was particularly appreciated for offering an objective historical overview of Islam's origins and doctrines, influencing subsequent European understandings of the religion. Critiques emerged primarily from orthodox Christian quarters, who faulted Sale for adopting an overly neutral tone that eschewed explicit polemics against Islamic tenets, potentially implying a deistic sympathy toward non-Christian revelations. Sale himself anticipated such objections, writing to correspondent Thomas Edwards on November 10, 1734, that while he had labored extensively on the translation, it might "give offence to some" despite his aim for public acceptability. This perceived impartiality, rooted in Sale's reliance on Muslim commentators like al-Baydawi and rather than solely , distinguished his effort from earlier, more tendentious renderings but drew charges of insufficient advocacy for Christianity's superiority.

Accusations of Bias and Mistranslation

George Sale's The Koran (1734) has been accused of embedding Christian biases, particularly through interpretive choices and notes that portray as derivative or fraudulent, reflecting his affiliation with the and Protestant worldview. In the , Sale explicitly aimed to "effectually expose the imposture" of the , framing it as a fabrication rather than divine , which critics interpret as a intent to discredit the text. Such hostility is said to manifest in omissions of Muslim exegetical traditions () and additions of periphrastic commentary that prioritize Latinized, Christian-influenced readings over direct Arabic fidelity. Specific mistranslations highlighted include rendering (the unseen, denoting aspects of divine knowledge hidden from humans) as "mysteries of faith," which allegedly Christianizes the term by evoking doctrinal secrets akin to Trinitarian enigmas rather than Islamic emphasis on God's transcendence. In 3:55, Sale translated mutawaffika (from to ) as "I will cause thee to die," portraying a physical and ascension sequence that critics argue distorts the Arabic root wafaya (to take fully or raise), favoring a crucifixion-affirming interpretation over views of without , thereby aiding Christian polemics. A 2025 critical identifies systematic ideological in macro- and micro-structures, where universal Quranic addresses (ya ayyuha al-nas, "O mankind") are localized to Meccan or Arabian contexts, diminishing the text's claimed universality and prophetic scope. Key examples include:
  • Quran 2:21: "O men of Mecca" instead of "O mankind," restricting a call to .
  • Quran 2:143: "O Arabians" for the ummah's directional shift in , limiting communal identity.
  • Quran 10:2 and 10:21: "Men of Mecca" for eschatological warnings and divine mercy, narrowing audience from humanity.
These patterns, spanning 12 verses, are argued to Islam as tribal rather than global, with lexical choices enhancing a of toward its doctrines. Critics further contend Sale's reliance on secondary Latin sources like Ludovico Marracci's 1698 edition introduced prejudicial interpolations, despite his claims of proficiency.

Legacy and Influence

Impact on Enlightenment Thought

George Sale's 1734 translation of the Qur'an, accompanied by its extensive Preliminary , furnished Enlightenment intellectuals with a primary English-language resource for examining Islamic texts through a lens of historical and rational analysis, diverging from prior polemical traditions. The outlined the pre-Islamic Arabian , Muhammad's life, and doctrinal parallels with and , emphasizing empirical origins over supernatural claims, which resonated with the era's toward revelation and preference for causal explanations rooted in human agency. This approach aligned with Enlightenment priorities of subjecting religious narratives to critical scrutiny, as evidenced by its adoption in broader discourses on and the critique of clerical authority. Voltaire, an early reader, initially portrayed as an impostor in works like his 1736 Essai sur les mœurs, but Sale's translation and annotations—highlighting the Qur'an's borrowings from biblical sources and its legislative innovations—prompted a nuanced shift, enabling Voltaire to deploy as a foil against Christian and . Similarly, drew extensively on Sale in The History of the Decline and Fall of the (1776–1789), particularly in volumes covering 's rise, where he echoed Sale's geographical and ethnographic details on Arabia while framing 's success through rational, non-miraculous lenses of social and political causation. Gibbon's reliance underscored Sale's role in legitimizing as a subject for secular , contributing to Enlightenment narratives that demystified prophetic figures as products of their environments rather than divine intervention. Sale's work also indirectly advanced deistic and anticlerical strains of thought by presenting the Qur'an as a human composition amenable to , influencing figures like , who acquired a copy in 1765 and referenced its covenants in legal contexts. This facilitated a cosmopolitan reappraisal of non-Christian traditions, though often instrumentalized to underscore universal rational principles over particularist faiths, thereby reinforcing the Enlightenment's emphasis on evidence-based inquiry into religious origins. Despite its Christian undertones critiquing Islamic doctrines, Sale's scholarly apparatus—prioritizing sources and historical parallels—elevated , paving the way for later rationalist engagements with global religious texts.

Role in Western Islamic Studies

George Sale's The Koran, Commonly Called the Alcoran of Mohammed (1734) represented a pivotal development in Western Islamic studies by providing the first English translation of the Quran directly from the Arabic text, supplanting earlier versions derived from Latin or French intermediaries that were often marred by confessional distortions. This scholarly edition incorporated marginal notes elucidating Arabic idioms, historical contexts, and doctrinal points, alongside appendices on Islamic jurisprudence and chronology, thereby enabling English-speaking readers to engage primary sources with greater fidelity than prior polemical efforts by figures like Alexander Ross. Sale's approach, informed by his training in Arabic under Edward Pococke and reliance on classical Muslim commentators like al-Baydawi and al-Zamakhshari—albeit selectively—prioritized textual accuracy over overt theological refutation, marking an early shift toward empirical orientalist methodology in Europe. The accompanying 200-page Preliminary Discourse further entrenched Sale's role, offering a systematic overview of Muhammad's , the Quran's compilation, and Islamic rituals based on Arabic chronicles such as and , which distinguished it from contemporary missionary tracts by emphasizing verifiable historical data over unsubstantiated allegations of imposture. This discourse, drawing on deist influences and rationalist , influenced Enlightenment critiques of religion, as evidenced by Voltaire's moderated assessment of following its consultation, and served as a foundational reference for 18th- and 19th-century scholars like and . By 1800, Sale's translation had undergone multiple reprints and abridgments, establishing it as the standard English Quran rendition for over a century and catalyzing institutional interest in Semitic within British academies. While later postcolonial analyses critique Sale's framework for decontextualizing Muslim exegeses and embedding Protestant presuppositions—such as portraying Islamic law through a lens of comparative antiquity—his work objectively expanded Western access to Islamic corpora, fostering subsequent advancements in Quranic criticism and that privileged evidence over hagiographic traditions. This empirical orientation, despite affiliations with the , positioned Sale as a of modern , where causal analysis of textual origins supplanted medieval , influencing fields from comparative to legal .

Modern Reassessments and Enduring Relevance

In the , scholarly reassessments of George Sale's 1734 Quran translation have emphasized its foundational role in English-language renditions while scrutinizing its interpretive choices. Analyses from perspectives, such as a 2025 critical examination, identify specific mistranslations—particularly in verses involving theological nuances—and argue that Sale's rendering occasionally imposed Christian polemical lenses, prioritizing literal fidelity over contextual equivalence. Another 2025 study highlights ideological influences in Sale's phrasing, suggesting that his annotations reflected Enlightenment-era toward Islamic doctrines rather than neutral , though it concedes the translation's superiority to prior indirect versions derived from Latin or French sources. These critiques, often rooted in postcolonial frameworks, contrast with evaluations praising Sale's direct Arabic sourcing and detailed Preliminary Discourse for providing empirical overviews of Muhammad's life and Islamic based on contemporary Orientalist sources like and al-Baydawi. Despite identified limitations, Sale's scholarship endures as a benchmark in Western Islamic studies for its methodological innovations, including extensive footnotes drawing on Arabic tafsirs and historical texts, which facilitated early comparative analyses. Modern comparativists reference his work in assessing translation evolution, noting its influence on later efforts like those of John Rodwell (1861) and its role in shaping Enlightenment debates on religious texts. The Preliminary Discourse, in particular, retains relevance for its factual cataloging of Islamic rituals and legal traditions, offering undoctored insights into 18th-century perceptions of the faith amid Ottoman expansions, though updated with contemporary to address Eurocentric assumptions. Sale's enduring impact lies in bridging classical Orientalism with modern interfaith discourse, where his translation serves as a historical artifact for examining causal dynamics in cross-cultural encounters, such as Britain's mercantile interests in Muslim lands. Recent volumes on Quran translation history cite it as a pivot point for secular scholarly engagement with the text, predating missionary-driven versions and influencing secular critiques in works by Voltaire. While not supplanting idiomatic modern renditions like those by Abdullah Yusuf Ali (1934) or Muhammad Asad (1980), Sale's edition persists in academic curricula for its unvarnished literalism, underscoring the tension between philological accuracy and cultural sensitivity in religious hermeneutics.

References

  1. https://karachiislamicus.com/index.php/ki/article/view/56
  2. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/392554192_George_Sale_and_His_Translation_of_the_Holy_Qur%27an_A_Critical_Analysis
  3. https://englishqurantranslations.wordpress.com/2014/12/03/sale-george/
  4. https://al-afkar.com/index.php/Afkar_Journal/article/download/1205/1032
  5. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/g/george-sale.html
  6. https://www.monticello.org/research-education/thomas-jefferson-encyclopedia/quran/
  7. https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_National_Biography%2C_1885-1900/Sale%2C_George
  8. https://scholar.harvard.edu/files/griggs/files/uh_article_2007.pdf
  9. https://discovery.princeton.edu/2013/11/03/scholar-locates-source-of-18th-century-quran/
  10. https://quran12-21.org/en/contexts/sale
  11. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/382494875_George_Sale_and_his_Translation_of_the_Qur%27an_A_Study
  12. https://referenceworks.brill.com/display/entries/CMR2/COM_28984.xml?language=en
  13. https://ahmadiyyafactcheckblog.com/2021/07/11/in-1734-george-sale-mis-translated-mutawafeeka-in-355-as-death/
  14. https://biblia-arabica.com/for-the-benefit-of-the-poor-christians-of-the-eastern-nations-printing-the-psalter-and-new-testament-in-arabic-in-eighteenth-century-london/
  15. https://www.raptisrarebooks.com/product/the-koran-commonly-called-the-alcoran-of-mohammed-translated-into-english-immediately-from-the-original-arabic-first-edition-rare-finely-bound/
  16. https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_the-koran-commonly-call_1734
  17. https://www.biblio.com/book/koran-commonly-called-alcoran-mohammed-first/d/1616832923
  18. https://www.academia.edu/120879630/Remarks_on_George_Sales_Quran_Translation_of_1734
  19. https://www.academia.edu/122307116/George_Sale_and_his_Translation_of_the_Qur_%25C4%2581n_A_Study
  20. https://madainproject.com/thomas_jeffersons_quran
  21. https://www.enotes.com/topics/koran/criticism/criticism/george-sale-essay-date-1734
  22. https://bahai-library.com/quran/quranprelim.html
  23. https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/24529
  24. https://archive.org/details/korancommonlyc00sale
  25. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/17496977.2023.2179883
  26. https://aha.confex.com/aha/2011/webprogram/Paper5951.html
  27. https://dsr.ju.edu.jo/djournals/index.php/Hum/article/download/7329/2360
  28. https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/82013170.pdf
  29. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7440.html.images
  30. https://mail.journalppw.com/index.php/jpsp/article/download/15377/9907/18884
  31. http://eaaoaa.com/resources/quran.pdf
  32. https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/7440
  33. https://www.academypublication.com/issues2/tpls/vol05/08/26.pdf
  34. https://ilkogretim-online.org/index.php/pub/article/download/7086/6835/13548
  35. https://www.academia.edu/122307116/George_Sale_and_his_Translation_of_the_Qur_%C4%81n_A_Study
  36. https://hal.science/hal-04587479v1/document
  37. https://www.academia.edu/6640436/The_Enlightenment_Qur%25C4%2581n_The_Politics_of_Translation_and_the_Construction_of_Islam
  38. https://www.jstor.org/stable/20024418
  39. https://themaydan.com/2020/01/thomas-jefferson-and-the-covenants-of-the-prophet-muhammad/
  40. https://www.juancole.com/2019/04/muhammad-anticlerical-enlightenment.html
  41. https://www.heritagetimes.in/sales-quran-and-its-influence-on-the-western-perception-of-prophet-of-islam
  42. https://journalppw.com/index.php/jpsp/article/view/15377
  43. https://answering-islam.org/Gilchrist/Vol1/5d.html
  44. https://habib.camden.rutgers.edu/publications/essays/islamic-studies/
  45. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/392317988_Ideological_Aspects_in_Religious_Texts_A_Critical_Analysis_of_George_Sale%27s_Translation_of_the_Holy_Qur%27an
  46. https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-quarterly/assessing-english-translations-of-the-quran
  47. https://al-afkar.com/index.php/Afkar_Journal/article/view/1205
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