Muhammad
Marmaduke Pickthall: A Servant of Islam
by Abu Ali Hadhrami
In the Name
of Allah, the Most Compassionate, the Most Merciful
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 travelled 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 Woking. 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 travelled 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 travelled 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 Encyclopaedia 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 Woking 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.