Korani Kerim (Mohammed Shemsuddin's Bulgarian translation)

This Bulgarian rendering of the meanings of the Qur'an was written clandestinely under communism by Mohammed Shemsuddin; Mykhaylo Yakubovych counts it the first modern Bulgarian translation by a Muslim, after the Christian missionary translations of 1902 and 1930. ¹

Mohammed Shemsuddin, born Mehmed Tabakov (1937–2010), belonged to the Turkish-speaking minority of southern Bulgaria; born in a village in Pazardzhik Province, he received an unofficial religious education from local imams, worked as a preacher, and is reported to have been arrested once for illegal religious activity. ¹ He began the translation in the mid-1980s to preserve the religious identity of younger Bulgarian Muslims who already spoke Bulgarian. ¹

The first edition circulated in 1986 in a few typewritten copies titled Budilnik na Muslimanite ("Awakener of the Muslims"), a title said to have been chosen to avoid naming the Qur'an; a revised second edition in the same form, titled Korani Kerim, appeared at the end of 1990, shortly before communism collapsed, and survives in Bulgarian libraries and on Bgislam.com. ¹

It has sura introductions and no commentary; comparison shows that its translator read Arabic and that its main source was probably Ali Fikri Yavuz's Turkish translation of 1967, and it has the typing errors common in self-published work. ¹

Though less popular than later Bulgarian translations from the Arabic, Yakubovych sees it as a telling example of religious leaders' efforts to keep their faith and identity during the Cold War. ¹

• Mykhaylo Yakubovych, "Qur'an translation of the week #210", The Global Qur'an, 2025. ¹