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

A committee was then set up to establish the canonical text of the Qurʾān by the third “rightly guided” caliph or Successor to the Prophet, ʿUthman ibn-ʿAffān. The commissioners worked at compiling the scattered Qurʾānic document during the years 650-655. Once this task was finished and the canon established, ʿUthmān then gave one copy each to Mecca and Madīna, and sent others to the new administrative centres of Basra and Kūfa in Iraq. Kūfa is said to have possessed a variant much later. ʿUthmān kept the original papers in Madīna for himself and the authorities there; this copy disappeared into the imperial German archives towards the end of the First World War when both Germany and Turkey suffered defeat, but may be in the Topkapı Museum in Istanbul today. Mention of old codices like the Kitāb al-Maṣāḥif of Ibn-Abī-Dāwūd, together with a collection of the variant readings can be found in Professor Arthur Jeffery’s Materials for the History of the Text of the Qurʾān (Leiden 1938, and Watt-Bell, p. 40).

The layout of my translation has been reached through a gradual process of trial and error which came chiefly so that I could locate significant material for myself, which I needed to refer to. Layout and editing are important just as ancient sajʿ resembles the wild pigeon’s broken cooing. Rhymed prose meets the ear, but since the invention of the printing press, it is punctuation and paragraphs that meet the reader’s eye. Verse form and punctuation are both matters of literary structure; when the rhyme shifts in the Qurʾān, it is shown roughly in this version by using different lines and paragraphs in English, so that the reader can achieve a similar rhythmic effect, especially for public reading or recitation.

Layout on the page may seem more important than rhyming today, for the eye rather than the ear is our contemporary instrument: “the blind and the sighted are not equal / nor are darkness and light" (35:19-20). In the seventh century, and during the West European middle ages until the invention of the printing press and the growth of a general reading public, learning largely meant such oral training.

Further problems were those of paragraphing and capitalization so as to follow English usage. Straight adjectives which refer to the Deity are capitalized, as well as unique qualities or symbols like the Path, the Way, Truth and so on. All pronouns: We, He, You etc. representing the Deity are capitalized here, including their possessive form (His, Your, Our etc.) as occurs with other mention of the Deity. This use of capitals is employed to ensure a mood of reverence for the name and mention (dhikr) of God, especially with younger or non-Muslim readers thus the names of God, including the pronouns You and Your, He, Him and His etc., are kept distinct in this work.

Capital Roman numerals refer to one of the 30 more-or-less equal parts into which the Qurʾān has been traditionally divided for the purpose of continuous recitation. Lower-case Roman numerals refer to the sections into which each longer chapter is divided. I use the asterisk * to mark the beginning of a verse; two of these ** indicate the 5th, 10th etc. verses; triple asterisks *** show 100’s.

Capital Roman numerals, placed in the upper inside corner of the page indicate the Part of the Qurʾān; following this are numbers (Arabic and