The Meanings of the Noble Qur'an with Explanatory Notes (Taqi Usmani)

This English rendering of the meanings of the Qur'an by Muhammad Taqi Usmani, born in 1943, was first published in 2007. It is rooted in the Deobandi movement, which arose in India in the nineteenth century and upholds the authority of traditional Hanafi scholarship. ¹ It is the first English Qur'an translation by a Deobandi scholar. ¹

Usmani was born in Deoband to Muhammad Shafi, who moved to Pakistan after Partition and founded Darul Uloom Karachi. The son studied and then taught there, held posts on Islamic legal bodies in Pakistan, founded an Islamic bank, chairs the sharia board of the State Bank of Pakistan, and sits on international bodies including the Muslim World League. ¹

The translation grew out of Usmani's work on the committee that translated his father's Urdu tafsir Ma'ariful Qur'an, first published in 1972, into English, a task that ran over decades and ended in 2004. ¹ Finding that no existing English translation always matched the tafsir, Usmani translated the Qur'an afresh for it, and later published a revised version on its own with brief notes for readers who did not want an extensive commentary. ¹

The first edition came out in 2007 from Maktaba Ma'ariful Quran, affiliated with the Dar al-Ulum in Karachi. In 2020 Turath Publishing of London printed a luxury edition in British English under a slightly different title, The Noble Qur'an: Meaning with Explanatory Notes. ¹ The printed book carries a foreword, an introduction to the Qur'an and its interpretation, sura introductions, footnotes and a thematic index; online reproductions often leave these out. ¹

In his introduction Usmani holds that lay readers may grasp the fundamentals of faith, but that understanding the Qur'an's laws requires experts grounded in Arabic, hadith and tafsir. ¹ The translation is in modern English and stays close to Arabic syntax, with additions in brackets; its notes draw mainly on Deobandi scholarship, Ma'ariful Qur'an above all, and in places cite Ashraf Ali Thanwi. ¹

Johanna Pink writes that the work drew a following and high praise at once, especially among conservative Sunni readers of South Asian background who trusted the translator's scholarly standing, and that reader reviews praised its accessible language and its balance of text and notes. ¹ It has Wikipedia articles in Arabic, Bengali, Malay and Urdu. ²

• Johanna Pink, "Qur'an translation of the week #184", The Global Qur'an, 2024. ¹
• Wikidata, Q110269259, revision 2562568579. ²