Alcoranus: the Medieval Latin Qur'an
Grant Holder
Funding Agency
The Leverhulme Trust
Amount of Award
£27,445
Summary of project
Edition and translation of Robert of Ketton's 1143 translation of the Qur'an, produced as the centrepiece of the Corpus cluniacensis for Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, whilst Robert was working, as he writes, "somewhere on the Ebro". This is the first surviving -- and for some authors, the best -- translation of the Qur'an, and gives an excellent insight into how twelfth-century Muslims understood their sacred text. Robert's translation remained, for several hundred years, the translation of the Qur'an for western readers, and was heavily annotated, both before its publication from Cluny, but also in the centuries after. It has not been edited since Bibliander's second printing of the text in 1550.