Publication - Naima Afif

New Paper in Translation Studies and Early Modern Retranslations of Canonical Texts: “The Hybridity of a Hebrew Retranslation of the Qur’an from Dutch by a Jewish Convert”

Hebrew Manuscript Library of Congress Naima AFIF study Postdoc researcher

My contribution to the volume Retranslating the Bible and the Qur’an: Historical Approaches and Current Debates is accessible in Open Access. Edited by Pieter Boulogne, Marijke H. de Lang, and Joseph Verheyden, this publication brings together studies that highlight the complexity of retranslating canonical religious texts. My paper explores a double indirect Hebrew translation of the Qur’an from the eighteenth century by a Jewish convert to Christianity. It discusses how the translator’s identities are negotiated, articulated, and reconstructed through the process of retranslation. Learn more about the book on the KULeuven website.

New publication: « De Leipzig à Fès: une copie sépharade de la traduction hébraïque du Coran d’Hermann Reckendorf »

Publication_Naima_Afif_Hebrew — Jerusalem, National Library of Israel, Ms. Heb. 8° 6453. Sura 1 in Hebrew, with a transliteration of the Arabic text in Hebrew script.

The first Hebrew translation of the Qur’an directly from Arabic was produced by Hermann Reckendorf (1825–1875) in Germany during the Jewish Enlightenment.

While Reckendorf’s translation circulated primarily in Ashkenazi intellectual circles, it also survives in a remarkable manuscript copied in nineteenth-century Morocco. This article examines this unique Sephardic witness and explores how a European Hebrew translation of the Qur’an was transmitted in a North African Jewish context.

Read the publication in Open Acces.