Translating the Qur'an in an Age of Nationalism

Brett Wilson is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Macalester College. He holds a PhD in Religion with a specialization in Islamic Studies from Duke University. His scholarship has appeared in the International Journal of Middle Eastern Studies, Comparative Islamic Studies, and The Encyclopaedia of Women in Islamic Cultures.

Wilson's book is a rare example of scholarship in which the fields of Islamic Studies and Ottoman/Turkish intellectual history converge together. His use of archival sources, publications, and texts in Turkish and Arabic enables the author to link Ottoman/Turkish intellectual history with that of the larger Islamic world...Translating the Qur'an is a must-read for those who want to explore the issue of the 'Turkish Qur'an' in its wider context, as well as related debates about the need for Islamic reform as a necessary element of modernisation and progress in the Muslim world in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

• Introduction ; 1. 'The Mother of Civilisation': The Printing Press and Illegal Qur'ans ; 2. Ottoman Editions of the Qur'an ; 3. Vernacular Commentaries and the New Intellectuals ; 4. The Politicization of Qur'anic Translation: From the New Arabism to the Young Turks ; 5. Translation and the Nation ; 6. Caliph and Qur'an: English Translations, Egypt Debates, and the Search for a Centre ; 7. The Elusive Turkish Qur'an ; Conclusion: The Ubiquitous Modern Qur'an ; Bibliography