Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall: A Servant of Islam

Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall: A Servant
of Islam

by Abu Ali Hadhrami

He was born William Pickthall in 1875 in London, to an Anglican
clergyman, and spent his formative years in rural Suffolk. He was
contemporary of Winston Churchill at Harrow, the famous private
school. During intervals from living a sedentary life in Suffolk,
Pickthall traveled extensively in the Arab world and Turkey. In
1917, Pickthall reverted to Islam and soon became a leader among
the emerging group of British Muslims.

In 1919, Pickthall worked for the London-based Islamic Information
Bureau that among other things published the weekly Muslim Outlook.
After completing his last novel The Early Hours in 1920, he departed
for his new assignment in India to serve as the editor of the Bombay
Chronicle. Pickthall devoted considerable interest in the independent
Islamic empire of India that was gradually eroded through a string
of British conspiracies. In 1927, Pickthall took over as the editor
of Islamic Culture, a new quarterly journal published under the
patronage of the Nizam of Hydrabad. He gave eight lectures on several
aspects of Islamic civilization at the invitation of The Committee
of "Madras Lectures on Islam" in Madras, India. His lectures
were published under the title "The Cultural Side of Islam"
in 1961 by S.M. Ashraf Publishers, Lahore. For an abridged version
of his fifth lecture, point your browser to Tolerance in Islam.

The mission of 'translating' the Qur'an had preoccupied Pickthall's
mind since he reverted to Islam. He saw that there was an obligation
for all Muslims to know the Qur'an intimately. In 1930, Pickthall
published The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (A. A. Knopf, New York).
Pickthall maintained that the Qur'an being the word of Allah (SWT)
could not be translated.

Pickthall returned to England in early 1935, and died a year later
on May 19 at St. Ives. He is buried in the Muslim cemetery at Brookwood,
Surrey, near Woking. Sixteen years later another distinguished translator
Abdullah Yusuf Ali joined him in this earthly domain.

The hundreds of thousands of Muslims that benefit from Muhammad
Marmaduke Pickthall's monumental work The Meaning of the Glorious
Qur'an seldom realize that this work was produced in the Nizamate
of Hyderabad, the Muslim ruled state in Southern India.

Pickthall, says Peter Clark in his book Marmaduke Pickthall: British
Muslim (London: Quartet, 1986), reverted to Islam at a time when
Turkey had been defeated at the end of the First World War, and
the collapse of the caliphate in Turkey.

In 1919, Pickthall worked for the London-based Islamic Information
Bureau that among other things published the weekly Muslim Outlook
that regularly reported on the Turkish defense of Anatolia.

When Muhammad Ali, the pan-Islamist educator, editor of the Comrade
and the leader of the Khilafat Movement came to London in 1920,
Pickthall warmly welcomed him. By that time, Pickthall had already
acquired a following in India, and in 1920 he was invited to serve
as editor of the Bombay Chronicle. India became his home for the
fifteen years.

Pickthall was also a novelist and had dispatched the manuscript
of his last novel, The Early Hours to his publisher, before departing
on his new assignment. Upon arrival in Bombay, Muslims especially
the supporters of the Khilafat warmly received the Pickthalls. It
was his love for the Khilafat Movement that led Pickthall to appreciate
Mohandas Karamchand (M.K) Gandhi, the Hindu leader who in order
to broaden the anti-British front had started lobbying for Hindu
support to the Movement.

Muslim communities throughout India invited Pickthall to deliver
Friday khutbas as well as lectures. Two years after his arrival
in India, Pickthall took up the study of Urdu, the contemporary
language of the Muslims of South Asia.

He was born William Pickthall in 1875 in London, to an Anglican
clergyman, and spent his formative years in rural Suffolk. He was
contemporary of Winston Churchill at Harrow, the famous private
school, and had ambitions to join the army and the foreign service.
During intervals from living a sedentary life in Suffolk, Pickthall
traveled extensively in the Arab world and Turkey. In 1917, Pickthall
announced his conversion to Islam and soon became a leader among
the emerging band of British Muslims.

LOVE FOR A MUSLIM STATE

Pickthall devoted considerable interest in the independent Islamic
empire of India that was gradually eroded through a string of British
conspiracies [Muslims in India - An Overview]. Many Indian states
that had been allies and off-shoots of this empire had evaded absorption
into the British Indian empire and preserved a nominal independence
in contrast to 'British India.' The largest of these states was
the Nizamate of Hyderabad.

Naturally, Pickthall wanted to work for the Nizam of Hyderabad
and when in 1925, he was offered the job of a school principal there,
he gladly accepted. Hyderabad was then a city of 400,000 inhabitants,
located on the southern bank of the Musi River, and capital of the
eponymous state that had a population of some twelve million. Although
the ruling family was Muslims, the majority of the subjects were
not.

The Nizam, Mir Osman Ali Khan, who had been a ruler since 1911,
was a patron of Islamic scholarships and of Arabs, especially those
from the Yemeni province of Hadramaut. A benevolent despot, he enjoyed
the loyalty of all his subjects and recruited civil servants, not
only from all over India but even overseas. In the words of Pickthall,
Hyderabad "is a sort of capital for all Muslims." The
Nizam, himself a poet in Persian and Urdu, made Hyderabad the chief
cultural center of India.

In the Nizam's Hyderabad, Pickthall saw the practical application
of Islam's tolerant polity. Over the period Pickthall gained greater
access to the Nizam and was assigned more important functions of
state.

SERVICE TO ISLAM

The most important work that Pickthall did during his stay in Hyderabad
consisted of the tasks he undertook in the service of Islam. In
1925, Pickthall was invited by the Committee of Muslims in Madras
to deliver a series of lectures on the cultural aspects of Islam.
The collection of these lectures published in 1927, present Islam
in a manner that could be understood by non-Muslims.

The same year, Pickthall was appointed editor of Islamic Culture,
a new quarterly journal published under the patronage of the Nizam.
Among the many authors whose works were published included younger
scholars like Dr. Muhammad Hamidullah and Muhammad Asad (formerly
Leopold Weiss). Interestingly both these writers eventually blossomed
into accomplished authors and are now respected for their translations
of the Qur'an into French and English.

TRANSLATING THE QUR'AN

In 1928, Pickthall took a two-year sabbatical to complete his translation
of the meaning of the Qur'an, a work that he considered as the summit
of his achievement.

Like any other Muslim scholar, Pickthall too maintained that the
Qur'an being the word of Allah (SWT) could not be translated. He
wrote in his foreword: "The Qur'an cannot be translated."
Understandably he titled his work that he finally published in 1930
as The Meaning of the Glorious Koran (A. A. Knopf, New York 1930),
declaring that it is a simply a meaning of the Message and not a
presentation in English of the Arabic text. It was first by a Muslim
whose native language was English, and remains among the two most
popular translations, the other being the work of Abdullah Yusuf
Ali.

The mission of 'translating' the Qur'an had preoccupied Pickthall's
mind since he reverted to Islam. He saw that there was an obligation
for all Muslims to know the Qur'an intimately. Even while serving
as an imam in London in 1919, he often put aside the then available
translations and offered his own in the course of his khutba.

His devotion to the Book - a "wonder of the world" -
was profound and he noted that while he had great difficulty in
remembering a passage in his native English, he could easily memorize
"page after page of the Qur'an in Arabic with perfect accuracy."
Pickthall warned against the danger of adoring the book rather than
its content. He chided the Muslims to "keep the message always
in your hearts, and live by it." In his introduction to the
surahs, Pickthall has powerfully focused on the universality of
Islam.

During the course of his translation, Pickthall consulted scholars
in Europe, and as a conscientious Muslim he wanted to secure the
approval of the most learned authority, the ulema of Al-Azhar in
Egypt. Towards this end, he traveled to Egypt in 1929 and stayed
in Cairo for three months where he had the support of Rashid Rida.
Some scholars suggested that the king reportedly believed that translating
the Qur'an was a grave sin and any one aiding Pickthall could be
dismissed from Al-Azhar. Pickthall brushed aside their various suggestions
and continued consulting the Al-Azhar scholars.

C. E. Bosworth in his Encyclopedia of Islam says that Pickthall
was "familiar with European Kur'an criticism", which he
accepted and applied selectively.

Allen and Unwin published Pickthall's work under license from Knopf
in England in 1939. Later, Pickthall completed an edition of his
translation with corresponding Arabic text (mushaf) within days
of his final departure from India. This bilingual edition was first
published in two volumes by the Government Press in Hyderabad. Allen
and Unwin also took over this edition in 1976. In 1953, the English
text was issued in New York as a paperback in the New American Library.

Pickthall's translation itself has been translated. In 1958 extracts
were put into Turkish by (inasi Siber) in Ankara. Other extracts
were published by M. Cevki Alay and Ali Kitabo in Istanbul the same
year. In 1964 it was rendered into Portuguese in Mozambique and
in 1960 a trilingual edition - English, Arabic and Urdu - appeared
in Delhi. It has also appeared in Tagalog, the language of the Moro
Muslims in the Philippines.

In 1982, in response to criticism by a Pakistani scholar, Pickthall's
translation was scrutinized by the Islamic Ideological Council of
Pakistan and found to be a satisfactory translation. Earlier, his
successor as editor of Islamic Culture, Muhammad Asad produced a
new translation of the Qur'an after expressing dissatisfaction over
Pickthall's knowledge of Arabic. Similarly, Professor Ahmed Ali
of Pakistan prefaced his translation that he had undertaken the
work to correct Pickthall's "errors.

In early 1935, Pickthall, just shy of sixty, retired from the Nizam's
service and returned to England. In 1936 he moved to St. Ives where
he died on May 19, 1936 and was buried in the Muslim cemetery at
Brookwood, Surrey, near Woking on May 23. Later another illustrious
translator Abdullah Yusuf Ali was to join him in this earthly domain.

Perhaps the eulogy published in Islamic Culture summed up this
illustrious life that Muhammad Marmaduke Pickthall was a "Soldier
of faith! True servant of Islam!"

Reference: Peter Clark, Marmaduke Pickthall: British Muslim; London:
Quartet, 1986.