T. B. Irving, The Qur’an: The First American Version; Translated and Commentary (1985)

‘beneficient’ in Latinized jargon, for bene- means ‘good’ or ‘well’ that is similar to khayr, while -ficent means ‘doing [it]’. The abstract noun in the causative IV form is iḥsān or ‘kindness’ and parallel in morphological pattern (IV vn.) to Islām, and īmān (‘faith’ or ‘belief’). The ideal was static. Reverence calls for restraint before things holy, giving sanctity to attitudes. Rushd or rashad is the social ideal of ‘common sense’ or ‘normal behavior’. We find it in the name of the twelfth-century Spanish Arab philosopher Ibn-Rushd, who prepared the text of Aristotle for the scholastic teachers in the rising European universities of the following century.

Similarly kufr is ‘disbelief’, ‘ingratitude’ and a kāfir is a ‘disbeliever’; shirk means ‘associating [someone else with God],’ and a mushrik is such an ‘associator’; ṭāghūt are those ‘arrogant’ persons who deliberately come between man and his God. Al-muttaqīn are ‘the heedful’, ‘those who do their duty’, while taqwà is the quality of ‘heeding [God’s decrees]’, or ‘heedfulness’, ‘piety’, just plain ‘doing one’s duty’ before God and man. The moral basis of the new state in Madina is seen in the ‘realm’ or mulk in what we now know as ‘control’ today, and this can be used both as a noun and a verb: “O God, Holder of Control!” (3:26)

The passage Laysa al-birr…, is rendered “It is not virtue…”; ‘virtue’ rather than ‘piety’ for this concept seems in order. Al-fāsiqūn are ‘perverse’, ‘corrupt’ or ‘immoral’ people (2:xii). We should notice how the terms Heaven and Hell are alliterative in both English and Arabic (al-janna and al-jahannam), to which we might add jaḥīm which I have rendered ‘Hades’ to maintain the poetical effect. I also want to keep ad-dunyā and al-ʿālamīn separate as this ‘nearer [worlds]’ and ‘the (greater) Universe’ respectively, so they can be separate in the text and in the reader’s mind. The latter is really a plural in Arabic, but I have unified this concept in English. Jinn and Rūḥ are two terms for ’sprite(s)’ and ‘Spirit’ respectively. Jinn is often rendered as ‘spirit’ too, although these are really separate concepts; I am rendering the former ‘sprite(s)’ and leaving the second as ‘Spirit’ or ‘Breath’ for Rūḥ as we see in 17:x (beginning). Sprites or jinn, as a term, is handled wretchedly by most commentators, because it represents a plural in itself, while jinni is the proper singular. Jinn are what are called elves or fairies in English folklore, and mean the personified powers of the supernatural which are vaguely sensed by less sophisticated people, whose forces we meet in Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”. These sprites found in the title of Chapter 72, were made from the glow in fire (55:i), like the angels or Diabolis (7:ii).

There are foreign-based words like mīl, the Roman ‘mile’ or a “thousand” paces; the ṣīrāt from Latin strata meaning ‘street’, its English-derived descendant; qaṣr from castrum which is Latin too, which via the Arabic, gives Spanish its alcazar (as well as Castro)’, thawr or ‘bull’ has its memories of the Minotaur in Crete, and los toros in Spain; arḍ or earth reveal this kinship, especially in terms connected with ancient agriculture; Burg in Germanic is linked with the title of Chapter 85 or Al-Burūj meaning Constellations, those ‘castles’ that we see in the night sky — which give us ‘borough’ in English and “bourgeois” in European sociology and politics.