M. I. Verevkin’s Translation of the Qur’ān (1790) — the Pearl of the Russian Enlightenment

Abstract

   The study is devoted to M. I. Verevkin’s translation of the Qur’ān (1790) — a landmark work of the Russian Enlightenment that had a decisive infl uence on the reception of the Qur’ān in Russia in the late 18 th  and the first half of the 19 th  centuries. Based on the classic French edition of the Qur’ān by A. du Ryer, M. I. Verevkin’s work refl ected the fundamental principles of the source text: a focus on a secular interpretation of the meanings of the Muslim Holy Scripture and a distancing from the polemical paradigm. On the other hand, the work on the translation of the Qur’ān provided M. I. Verevkin, one of the founders of the Russian literary language, with a unique opportunity to demonstrate that the language norm established by Russian Enlighteners can express profound religious and philosophical meanings.