Alxuraan: the Wolof translation of Assane Sylla

Alxuraan is a Wolof rendering of the meanings of the Qur'an by the Senegalese thinker Assane Sylla, published by the Libya-based World Islamic Call Society in 2003; with an Ahmadiyya translation it is the first modern complete Qur'an in Wolof, the language of a people of Senegal, the Gambia and Mauritania. ¹

Sylla (1928–2012) was born in Dakar, studied psychology and philosophy in Grenoble and Paris, and completed a PhD at the Sorbonne in 1976 on the moral philosophy of the Wolof; after Senegal's independence in 1960 he helped develop the Latin alphabet for Wolof, and he worked on the translation in the 1980s and 1990s while affiliated with the Institut Fondamental d'Afrique Noire. ¹

The translation is written in Latin script under the Senegalese government decrees of 1971–1985, rather than the Arabic-based Wolofal script used in Islamic schools. ¹ It faces the Arabic text page by page in the Hafs reading, though Warsh predominates in Senegal; it has no footnotes, a few bracketed insertions clarifying pronouns and speakers, a fairly literal style, and sura names given in Wolof translation only. ¹ A short appendix names Sylla's sources: recorded Wolof tafsir lessons of leading Dakar scholars, Ibn Kathir's tafsir, and French translations by Hamza Boubakeur, Blachère and Muhammad Hamidullah. ¹

How many copies were printed, and whether there were later editions, is not known; Mykhaylo Yakubovych sees it as an important step for Wolof literature in Latin script, and reads its avoidance of Arabic loanwords as a sign that it addressed a general readership and that its author saw it as a contribution to national culture. ¹

• Mykhaylo Yakubovych, "Qur'an translation of the week #176", The Global Qur'an, 2023. ¹