L’auteur

Thomas E. BURMAN est spécialiste d’histoire médiévale notamment des relations entre juifs, chrétiens et musulmans.

Présentation de l’ouvrage

In Reading the Qur’an in Latin Christendom, 1140-1560, Thomas E. Burman looks instead to a different set of sources : the Latin translations of the Qur’an made by European scholars and the manuscripts and early printed books in which these translations circulated. Using these largely unexplored materials, Burman argues that the reading of the Qur’an in Western Europe was much more complex. While their reading efforts were certainly often focused on attacking Islam, scholars of the period turned out to be equally interested in a whole range of grammatical, lexical, and interpretive problems presented by the text. Indeed, these two approaches were interconnected : attacking the Qur’an often required sophisticated explorations of difficult Arabic grammatical problems.

Furthermore, while most readers explicitly denounced the Qur’an as a fraud, translations of the book are sometimes inserted into the standard manuscript format of Christian Bibles and other prestigious Latin texts (small, centered blocks of text surrounded by commentary) or in manuscripts embellished with beautiful decorated initials and elegant calligraphy for the pleasure of wealthy collectors.

Table des matières

A Note on Matters of Form

Introduction : Qur’an Translation, Qur’an Manuscripts, and Qur’an Reading in Latin Christendom

– Chapter 1. Translation, Philology, and Latin Style
– Chapter 2. Latin-Christian Qur’an Translators, Muslim Qur’an Exegesis
– Chapter 3. Polemic, Philology, and Scholastic Reading in the Earliest
Manuscript of Robert of Ketton’s Latin Qur’an
– Chapter 4. New Readers, New Frames : The Later Manuscript and Printed Versions of Robert of Ketton’s Latin Qur’an
– Chapter 5. The Qur’an Translations of Mark of Toledo and Flavius Mithridates : Manuscript Framing and Reading Approaches
– Chapter 6. The Manuscripts of Egidio da Viterbo’s Bilingual Qur’an : Philology (and Polemic ?) in the Sixteenth Century

Conclusion. Juan de Segovia and Qur’an Reading in Latin Christendom, 1140-1560

Appendix : Four Translations of 22:1-5
Abbreviations and Short Titles
Notes
Select Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments

(Source : University of Pennsylvania Press)

Compte rendu-Book review

Boisliveau, (Anne-Sylvie), Journal of Early Modern History, Volume XIII, 4 (2009), p. 315-317 (3)