George Sale


George Sale was a British Orientalist scholar and practising solicitor, best known for his 1734 translation of the Qur'an into English. He was also author of The General Dictionary, in ten volumes, folio.
In 1748, after having read Sale's translation, Voltaire wrote his own essay "De l'Alcoran et de Mahomet". Voltaire shared Sale's view that Mohammed was a "sublime charlatan" Voltaire bestowed high praise on Sale but misasserted him to have spent twenty-five years in Arabia.

Biography

Born in Canterbury, Kent, he was educated at the King's School, Canterbury, and in 1720 became a student of the Inner Temple. It is known that he trained as a solicitor in his early years but took time off from his legal pursuits, returning at need to his profession. Sale was an early member of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge.
Sale became seriously ill with fever for eight days before his death. George Sale died at Surrey Street, The Strand, London, on 13 November 1736. Sale was buried at St. Clement Danes. His family consisted of a wife and five children.

Alkoran of Mohammed

In 1734, Sale published a translation of the Qurʻan, Alcoran of Mohammed, dedicated to John Carteret, 2nd Earl Granville. Relying heavily on O.M.D. Louis Maracci's Latin translation, Sale provided numerous notes and a Preliminary discourse. Sales had access to the Dutch Church, Austin Friars 16thC manuscript of al-Baydāwī's The Lights of Revelation and the Secrets of Interpretation and this seems the source for his Arabic Quran rather than his own personal Quran, catalogued MS Sale 76 in the Bodleian.
Sales footnotes provide the literal translation where it differs from the idiom of the body text; he gives alternate variant readings; and supplementary historical and contextual information.

Preliminary discourse

Though he did not place Islam at an equal level with Christianity, Sale seemed to view Mohammad as a conqueror who sought to destroy idolatry and a lawgiver who managed to change and supplant many practices in Arabia:
Sale prefixed a Preliminary Discourse to his translation covering topics including Arabs "before hijra"; the State of the Eastern Churches, and Judaism, at time of Mohammed; the Peculiarities of the Quran; positive and negative Doctrines and Instructions of the Quran; and political Islam in the 1730s.
Sale posits the decline of the Persian Empire on rivalry between the sects of Manes and Mazdak. Mass immigration into Arabia to escape persecution in the Grecian empire. In his eighth essay on False Prophecy, Sale notes Muslim Sects both Canonical and "heretical", including here Shi'sm.

Other works

Sale was also a corrector of the Arabic version of the New Testament issued by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge. He acquired a library with valuable rare manuscripts of Persian, Ottoman Turkish, and Arabic origins, which is now held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.
He assisted in the writing of the Universal History published in London from 1747 to 1768. When the plan of universal history was arranged, Sale was one of those who were selected to carry it into execution. Sale wrote the chapter, "The Introduction, containing the Cosmogony, or Creation of the World". Critics of the time accused Sale of having a view which was hostile to tradition and the Scriptures. They attacked his account of cosmogony as having a view giving currency to heretical opinions.
His Books:
In 1760 the Radcliffe Library, Oxford acquired his collection of mainly 13th-18th century Persian and Arabic manuscripts, mostly poetry and belles-lettres. They were transferred to the Bodleian Library in 1872. Richard Alfred Davenport wrote his biography. Works included in Sales library include Ibn Khallikān’s Wafayāt al-ayān ; selection of hadith ; collections of the stories of saints and martyrs ; the sayings of Alī ; biographies of Shi'ite, Majālis al-mu'minīn by Nūr Allāh b.'Abd Allāh Shushtarī ; instructions on use of the Quran for divination, and a treatise on the merits of visiting the Prophet’s grave.
Sale's translation of the Qu'ran has been reprinted into modern times. In January 2007, Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress, was sworn in using a 1764 edition of Sale's translation of the Qurʻan, sold to the Library of Congress in 1815 by Thomas Jefferson. In January 2019 newly elected Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar were sworn in using the same edition of Sales's translation of Qu'ran.