N. J. Dawood
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Nessim Joseph Dawood (born 1927) in Baghdad, Iraq, to an Iraqi Jewish family. He came to England in 1945 as an Iraq State scholar, and settled there. He graduated from the University of London. He is known for his English translation of the Qur’an, Tales from the One Thousand and One Nights (Penguin Classics) and his edition of the Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun. Dawood’s translation of the Qur’an, titled “The Koran”, is the world’s best-selling English translation of the Qur’an.
In the first edition of his translation of the Qur’an, in 1956, Dawood rearranged the chapters (suras) into more-or-less chronological order. Later editions restored the traditional sequence.
Some have criticized Dawood’s translation for “inaccuracies”. In an earlier edition, the phrase “Children of Adam” was wrongly printed “Children of Allah” owing to an oversight by the printers’ proof-reader. Although there have since been seven major revisions with more than 55 reprints over five decades, this “aberration” is still being harped upon.
Throughout his translation, Dawood has closely followed the tafsir of Al-Baidhawi and Al-Jalalain.
[edit] External links
- Penguin's biography of N. J. Dawood
- New Statesman article covering the subject of translating the Qu'ran and includes critism on N.J. Dawood's translation
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