translation made by M. Kasimriski, which was based on Sale’s translation and published in Paris for the first time in 1840. In short, throughout the eighteenth and the greater part of the nineteenth centuries translations of the Qur’ân in various European languages emanated from the Latin translation of Marracci and its alter-ego the English translation of George Sale.

II. The Modern Period: Changed Tactics To Assail the Qur’ân

(a) European imperial expansion and a new phase of Qur’ânic studies

Sale’s translation and Preliminary Discourse marked the apogee of the pattern of translation-refutation set in motion by Peter the Venerable. The rest of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century marked a transition to the second period of the orientalist Qur’ânic studies. During this transition period and also afterwards various Marracci-Sale based and independent translations of the Qur’ân were of course issued; (1) but the world situation was changing completely which called for new approaches to Qur’ânic studies. By the middle of the nineteenth century the European nations had established their imperial dominion over a number of Asian and African countries, mostly Muslim lands, and had come into closer contact with their Muslim populations. This imperial expansion gave rise to new hopes for christianizing the conquered peoples and led to the establishment of a number of Christian missionary societies in Europe. These missionary societies, aided and encouraged directly and indirectly by the imperial administrators, conducted their activities in the conquered lands in a very extensive and systematic manner. These were intellectually supported by a new phase of orientalism. In fact many of the new generation of orientalists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries came from among the ranks of the missionaries and imperial administrators.

The imperial expansion also made the classical Arabic and Islamic works more easily accessible to European scholars. The changed