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Muhammad Marmaduke
Pickthall
A Servant of Islam by Abu Ali Hadhrami
He was born William Pickthall in 1875 in London, to an Anglican clergyman,
and spent his formative years in
rural Suffolk. He was contemporary of Winston Churchill at Harrow, the
famous private school. During intervals from living a sedentary life in
Suffolk, Pickthall traveled extensively in the Arab world and Turkey. In
1917, Pickthall reverted to Islam and soon became a leader among the
emerging group of British Muslims.
In 1919, Pickthall worked for the London-based Islamic Information Bureau
that among other things published
the weekly Muslim Outlook. After completing his last novel The Early Hours
in 1920, he departed for his new
assignment in India to serve as the editor of the Bombay Chronicle.
Pickthall devoted considerable interest in the independent Islamic empire
of India that was gradually eroded through a string of British
conspiracies. In 1927, Pickthall took over as the editor of Islamic
Culture, a new quarterly journal published under the patronage of the
Nizam of Hydrabad. He gave eight lectures on several aspects of Islamic
civilization at the invitation of The Committee of "Madras Lectures
on Islam" in Madras, India. His lectures were published under the
title "The Cultural Side of Islam" in 1961 by S.M. Ashraf
Publishers, Lahore. For an abridged version of his
fifth lecture, point your browser to Tolerance in Islam.
The mission of 'translating' the Qur'an had preoccupied Pickthall's mind
since he reverted to Islam. He saw that there was an obligation for all
Muslims to know the Qur'an intimately. In 1930, Pickthall published The
Meaning of the Glorious Koran (A. A. Knopf, New York). Pickthall
maintained that the Qur'an being the word of Allah (SWT) could not be
translated.
Pickthall returned to England in early 1935, and died a year later on May
19 at St. Ives. He is buried in the Muslim cemetery at Brookwood, Surrey,
near Working. Sixteen years later another distinguished translator
Abdullah Yusuf Ali joined him in this earthly domain.
The hundreds of thousands of Muslims that benefit from Muhammad Marmaduke
Pickthall's monumental work The Meaning of the Glorious Qur'an seldom
realize that this work was produced in the Nizamate of Hyderabad, the
Muslim ruled state in Southern India.
Pickthall, says Peter Clark in his book Marmaduke Pickthall: British
Muslim (London: Quartet, 1986),
reverted to Islam at a time when Turkey had been defeated at the end of
the First World War, and the
collapse of the caliphate in Turkey.
In 1919, Pickthall worked for the London-based Islamic Information Bureau
that among other things published
the weekly Muslim Outlook that regularly reported on the Turkish defense
of Anatolia.
When Muhammad Ali, the pan-Islamist educator, editor of the Comrade and
the leader of the Khilafat Movement came to London in 1920, Pickthall
warmly welcomed him.
By that time, Pickthall had already acquired a following in India, and in
1920 he was invited to serve as editor of the Bombay Chronicle. India
became his home for the fifteen years.
Pickthall was also a novelist and had dispatched the manuscript of his
last novel, The Early Hours to his
publisher, before departing on his new assignment.
Upon arrival in Bombay, Muslims especially the supporters of the Khilafat
warmly received the Pickthalls. It was his love for the Khilafat Movement
that led Pickthall to appreciate Mohandas Karamchand (M.K) Gandhi, the
Hindu leader who in order to broaden the anti-British front had started
lobbying for Hindu support to the Movement.
Muslim communities throughout India invited Pickthall to deliver Friday
khutbas as well as lectures. Two
years after his arrival in India, Pickthall took up the study of Urdu, the
contemporary language of the Muslims of South Asia.
He was born William Pickthall in 1875 in London, to an Anglican clergyman,
and spent his formative years in
rural Suffolk. He was contemporary of Winston Churchill at Harrow, the
famous private school, and had ambitions to join the army and the foreign
service. During intervals from living a sedentary life in Suffolk,
Pickthall traveled extensively in the Arab world and Turkey. In 1917,
Pickthall announced his conversion to Islam and soon became a leader among
the emerging band of British Muslims.
LOVE FOR A MUSLIM STATE
Pickthall devoted considerable interest in the independent Islamic empire
of India that was gradually eroded through a string of British
conspiracies [Muslims in India - An Overview]. Many Indian states that had
been allies and off-shoots of this empire had evaded absorption into the
British Indian empire and preserved a nominal independence in contrast to
'British India.' The largest of these states was the Nizamate of Hyderabad.
Naturally, Pickthall wanted to work for the Nizam of Hyderabad and when in
1925, he was offered the job of
a school principal there, he gladly accepted. Hyderabad was then a city of
400,000 inhabitants, located on the southern bank of the Musi River, and
capital of the eponymous state that had a population of some twelve
million. Although the ruling family was Muslims, the majority of the
subjects were not.
The Nizam, Mir Osman Ali Khan, who had been a ruler since 1911, was a
patron of Islamic scholarships and
of Arabs, especially those from the Yemeni province of Hadramaut. A
benevolent despot, he enjoyed the loyalty of all his subjects and
recruited civil servants, not only from all over India but even overseas.
In the
words of Pickthall, Hyderabad "is a sort of capital for all
Muslims." The Nizam, himself a poet in Persian
and Urdu, made Hyderabad the chief cultural center of India.
In the Nizam's Hyderabad, Pickthall saw the practical application of
Islam's tolerant polity. Over the
period Pickthall gained greater access to the Nizam and was assigned more
important functions of state.
SERVICE TO ISLAM
The most important work that Pickthall did during his stay in Hyderabad
consisted of the tasks he undertook
in the service of Islam. In 1925, Pickthall was invited by the Committee
of Muslims in Madras to deliver a series of lectures on the cultural
aspects of Islam. The collection of these lectures published in 1927,
present Islam in a manner that could be understood by non-Muslims.
The same year, Pickthall was appointed editor of Islamic Culture, a new
quarterly journal published under the patronage of the Nizam. Among the
many authors whose works were published included younger scholars like Dr.
Muhammad Hamidullah and Muhammad Asad (formerly Leopold Weiss).
Interestingly both these writers eventually blossomed into accomplished
authors and are now respected for their translations of the Qur'an into
French and English.
TRANSLATING THE QUR'AN
In 1928, Pickthall took a two-year sabbatical to complete his translation
of the meaning of the Qur'an, a work that he considered as the summit of
his achievement.
Like any other Muslim scholar, Pickthall too maintained that the Qur'an
being the word of Allah (SWT) could not be translated. He wrote in his
foreword: "The Qur'an cannot be translated." Understandably he
titled his work that he finally published in 1930 as The Meaning of the
Glorious Koran (A. A. Knopf, New York 1930), declaring that it is a simply
a meaning of the Message and not a presentation in English of the Arabic
text. It was first by a Muslim whose native language was English, and
remains among the two most popular translations, the other being the work
of Abdullah Yusuf Ali.
The mission of 'translating' the Qur'an had preoccupied Pickthall's mind
since he reverted to Islam. He saw that there was an obligation for all
Muslims to know the Qur'an intimately. Even while serving as an imam in
London in 1919, he often put aside the then available translations and
offered his own in the course of his khutba.
His devotion to the Book - a "wonder of the world" - was
profound and he noted that while he had great
difficulty in remembering a passage in his native English, he could easily
memorize "page after page of
the Qur'an in Arabic with perfect accuracy." Pickthall warned against
the danger of adoring the book rather
than its content. He chided the Muslims to "keep the message always
in your hearts, and live by it." In his
introduction to the surahs, Pickthall has powerfully focused on the
universality of Islam.
During the course of his translation, Pickthall consulted scholars in
Europe, and as a conscientious Muslim he wanted to secure the approval of
the most learned authority, the ulema of Al-Azhar in Egypt. Towards this
end, he traveled to Egypt in 1929 and stayed in Cairo for three months
where he had the support of Rashid Rida. Some scholars suggested that the
king reportedly believed that translating the Qur'an was a grave sin and
any one aiding Pickthall could be dismissed from Al-Azhar. Pickthall
brushed aside their various suggestions and continued consulting the Al-Azhar
scholars.
C. E. Bosworth in his Encyclopedia of Islam says that Pickthall was
"familiar with European Kur'an
criticism", which he accepted and applied selectively.
Allen and Unwin published Pickthall's work under license from Knopf in
England in 1939. Later, Pickthall completed an edition of his translation
with corresponding Arabic text (mushaf) within days of his final departure
from India. This bilingual edition was first published in two volumes by
the Government Press
in Hyderabad. Allen and Unwin also took over this edition in 1976. In
1953, the English text was issued
in New York as a paperback in the New American Library.
Pickthall's translation itself has been translated. In 1958 extracts were
put into Turkish by (inasi Siber)
in Ankara. Other extracts were published by M. Cevki Alay and Ali Kitabo
in Istanbul the same year. In 1964
it was rendered into Portuguese in Mozambique and in 1960 a trilingual
edition - English, Arabic and Urdu -
appeared in Delhi. It has also appeared in Tagalog, the language of the
Moro Muslims in the Philippines.
In 1982, in response to criticism by a Pakistani scholar, Pickthall's
translation was scrutinized by the Islamic Ideological Council of Pakistan
and found to be a satisfactory translation. Earlier, his successor as
editor of Islamic Culture, Muhammad Asad produced a new translation of the
Qur'an after expressing dissatisfaction over Pickthall's knowledge of
Arabic. Similarly, Professor Ahmed Ali of Pakistan prefaced his
translation that he had undertaken the work to correct Pickthall's
"errors.
In early 1935, Pickthall, just shy of sixty, retired from the Nizam's
service and returned to England. In
1936 he moved to St. Ives where he died on May 19, 1936 and was buried in
the Muslim cemetery at
Brookwood, Surrey, near Working on May 23. Later another illustrious
translator Abdullah Yusuf Ali was
to join him in this earthly domain.
Perhaps the eulogy published in Islamic Culture summed up this illustrious
life that Muhammad Marmaduke
Pickthall was a "Soldier of faith! True servant of Islam!"
Reference: Peter Clark, Marmaduke Pickthall: British
Muslim; London: Quartet, 1986.
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