Fazlollah Nikayin, The Quran; The First Poetic Translation (2000)

From amongst previous translations in English, my debt to Abdullah Yousuf Ali, Abul-A'la Maududi and Mohammad Ali, is not to be measured, not for their unattractive style of translation which I never followed, but for the wealth of Koranic information and Elucidations they have provided for their readers. My own footnotes, however, are most brief, and never didactic or interpretative; yet the oft-repeated footnotes may bother some of the readers. I apologize for this, but they are meant for people who may be reading parts of the Book at different times.

The verses are rendered in the iambic, the majesty of the English poetry, and though often in pentameters, they vary in their lengths according to the requirements of the original verse being translated. There is no fixed rhyme scheme: Rhymes of all sorts, parallel, lopsided, internal, etc. have been employed at the service of more fluency in communicating the Message, without regard to the stylistics of the original Arabic which has no application in English.

Finally if, in the translation of some 6236 verses of varying lengths, I have somewhere come near reflecting the eloquence and beauty of the original in the mirror of the English language, the credit should undoubtedly go to my life-time companions: Shakespeare, Milton, Dryden, Byron, Pope, Coleridge, FitzGerald and surely to the masterly translators of the Holy Bible, Authorized King James Version; may their beautiful souls be increasingly blessed by the Most Merciful.