Versified Translation of the Qur’an in Mathnavi

Abstract

Versified translation of the Qur’an was current in the 4th century A.H. Ferdowsi, Naser Khosrow, ‎Sanayi and Molavi are considered the best Persian poet translators of the Qur’an. Mathnavi is a mystic-‎didactic book and Molana tries to teach his readers by transferring the Qur’an’s‏ ‏concepts. He uses the ‎Qur’an’s verses more than 400 times directly and indirectly. This paper just discusses the Qur’an’s ‎verses as translated and used in Mathnavi. For this reason,‎‏ ‏all the six sections of Mathnavi of ‎Nicholson were reread and each verse is analyzed separately. An initial investigation of Rumi's ‎Mathnavi revealed that four methods were employed in his translation of the Qur’an verses:Direct ‎translation of verses while preserving grammatical structure of the source language; Versified ‎translation of the verses by maintaining one or more words from the source language; Free sense-for-‎sense translation by relying on the structure of the target language; Free sense-for-sense translation ‎of the prophets’ anecdotes and Quranic accounts by employing the techniques of allusion, brevity or ‎expansion.‎