A late meeting
During Islam's first 400 years in the land that is today Iran, the Persian-speaking population was rarely informed of the Quran's contents. Translations into Persian, the first of which was written in Transoxiana, were limited until the 20th century. Even those were confined to princely courts or private libraries; they were inaccessible to the masses, most of whom were, in any case, illiterate.
During the 600 years or so of the caliphates, first of the Umayyads of Damascus, then the Abbasids who ruled from Baghdad, the policy was to Arabize the lands of the Islamic empire. Translating the Quran was, therefore, seen as unfit if not impious. The Quran's holiness was enmeshed with its language, in keeping with state-approved orthodoxy. Piety sourced in Arabic thus became part of the policy of making the Islamic empire an Arab empire.
The Mongols put a violent end to the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad in 1258, though this was of little use to Quran's translation.
Under the Safavids, who ruled Persia and beyond from the early 16th to the mid-18th centuries, indifference to Persian literature had its effect on translation: There were no notable Persian versions of the Quran under the dynasty that is often considered the first 'national' dynasty after Islam (the Safavids would have spoken a Turkish dialect more commonly than Persian).
New religious thinkers
Students reading the Quran in Lahore, Pakistan
TWT/ZUMA
The Quran after the 1979 Revolution
Following the Persian Constitutional Revolution (from 1904-05), the use of written (and often simplified) Persian took off as part of a modernizing and patriotic agenda. This fueled translations of the Quran into Persian, and more literate Iranians became familiar with the book's contents.
Translations increased markedly after the 1979 Revolution, with several versions published in the 1980s and 1990s with the aim of promoting religion, not Iranian culture.
From the 1990s , some Iranians started to doubt the Quran as a divine source.
This has been of little use to the Islamic Republic, which always touted itself as the pious government par excellence. As more people became familiar with the book's contents, the contrast between its premises and the regime's double standards and cruelty became glaring. This may have contributed to a trend from the 1990s among some Iranians to doubt the Quran as a divine source, and strengthened outside or academic perspectives on the text.
Some began to consider the Quran not the Word of God but the work of the Prophet Muhammad, while others resorted to hermeneutic interpretations to explain gaps between its dictates and the needs of modern society. They were called, among other things, New Religious Thinkers, and were at times associated with political reformism inside the Islamic Republic.
Worldcrunch 🗞 Extra!
Know more • Following the 1979 Revolution, the Iranian regime imposed a Sharia legal system, meaning one that directly stems from the Quran and other pillars of Islam. While the Muslim world agrees in considering the Quran as the foundation of Sharia, there are major disagreements over the principles upon which this should be translated into law. This can result in laws based more on the interpretation by the ruling class than on religious principles.
In Iran, a major example of this phenomenon is the death penalty, which today is carried out in certain cases of adultery, homosexuality, “spreading corruption on earth” and more. Yet, this departs significantly from the Islamic doctrine, writes Beirut-based daily L’Orient-Le-Jour: “The Quran only mentions the death penalty once, as punishment for deliberate murder. Anything that has to do with drugs, espionage, homosexual relations, adultery, apostasy and other non-voluntary murders are excluded.”
According to Amnesty International, only China carried out more death sentences in 2023 than Iran, which executed 853 people, marking a 48% rise from the previous year. — Fabrizio La Rocca (read more about the Worldcrunch method here)
New Persian translations
Differences of interpretation, if not confusion, abound in Persian translations of the Quran. This was mainly because its language is ancient and complex, and the competence of most of its translators has proved to be limited. Yet even these subjective renditions broadened public familiarity with the text, and inadvertently provoked skepticism or transformed people's views on religion.
This is reminiscent of similar results in 16th century Europe, when the Protestants encouraged translations of the Bible from Latin to European languages. That broke the clergy's interpretive monopoly, and allowed ordinary people to read and interpret the text by themselves — for better or worse, acting as a prelude to significant developments in thought in Europe.
In Iran, more widespread if superficial contact with the Quran may have boosted religious revisionism and even a rejection of the Islamic religion — if not all religions — in a country suffering from 45 years of tyrannical rule in the religion's name.
It may even have strengthened rationalism in Iranian society — although without relevant studies, one can only speculate. But if Iranians are more skeptical and less accepting of received ideas and interpretations, this may be another step on that process solemnly termed as progress.
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