The Koran: Commonly Called The Alcoran of Mohammed; Translated into English Immediately From the Original Arabic; With Explanatory Notes, Taken From the Most Approved Commentators. To Which is Prefixed a Preliminary Discourse. A New Edition, With a Memoir of the Translator, and With Various Readings and Illustrative Notes From Savary's Version of the Koran
London: William Tegg & Co., 1857. New edition. Hardcover. Quarto. xvi, 132, 516pp. Index. Blue buckram, spine lettered in gilt. Illustrated with a large folding frontispiece view of the Mosque at Mecca, 3 genealogical tables (2, folding), and a folding map of Arabia. With a prefix of the life of Sale. Outer leaves with some foxing.
In 1734, Sale published the translation of the Qur'an, dedicated to John Lord Carteret. Sale provided numerous notes and a "Preliminary Discourse" which was manifest with in-depth knowledge of Eastern habits, manners, traditions, and laws. Voltaire bestowed high praise on Sale's version of the Koran. Sale did not, however, place Islam at an equal level with Christianity. He stated, As Mohammed gave his Arabs the best religion he could, preferable, at least, to those of the ancient pagan lawgivers, I confess I cannot see why he deserves not equal respect, though not with Moses or Jesus Christ, whose laws came really from heaven, yet with Minos or Numa, notwithstanding the distinction of a learned writer, who seems to think it a greater crime to make use of an imposture to set up a new religion, founded on the acknowledgment of one true God, and to destroy idolatry, than to use the same means to gain reception to rules and regulations for the more orderly practice of heathenism already established. Very good. Item #50718
Price: $250.00