(c) The first print of the Qur’ân – Burnt at the Pope’s instance

Appearance of translations in European national languages

It was also during this period of the Reformation that the full Arabic Qur’ân was printed for the first time in Venice about the year 1533; but all the copies were subsequently burned at the instance of the Pope. (1) The venture was doubtless facilitated by the invention of the art of printing in the previous century by the use of movable letters (types). Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, however, the orientalist Qur’ânic studies followed in general the pattern set by Peter the Venerable, namely, to issue translations of the Qur’ân together with "refutations" of it and of Islam. The main change in the field brought about by the Renaissance and the Reformation was that henceforth translations and "Refutations" started appearing in modern European languages along with Latin.

The way was in fact shown by Luther’s German translation of the Bible. Thus Andrea Arrivabene made from the Latin translation or rather paraphrasing of Ketenensis’s (Bibliander) an Italian version, L’ Alcorano di Macometto, which was published in 1547; and from this Italian translation of the translation Solomon Schweigger made the first German translation, Alcoranus Mahometicus, published from Nuremberg in 1616; and from this German translation of the translation of the translation was prepared the first Dutch translation, De Arabische Alkoran, issued posthumously in 1641.

Shortly following this Dutch translation came the first French translation, L’ Alcoran de Mahomet, made independently by André du Ryer, who had been French Consul General in Egypt, and was published from Paris in 1647. It was, however, no better than its predecessors, "there being mistakes in every page", as Sale observes, "besides frequent transpositions, omissions and additions, faults unpardonable in a work of